Talk:Genetic history of Egypt/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Ramses III and the Amarna Dynasty

Their DNA results should be part of the article on the DNA History of Egypt. The study is remarkable, because it shows Ramses III has haplogroup E1b1a, which is now much rarer in Egypt. In a collage: Ramses III and the rest of the Amarna Dynasty - Tutankhamon, Amenhotep III, possibly Tiye and Akhenaton. Sources: DNA Tribes Digest Feb 1 2013 and DNA Tribes Digest Jan 1 2012. The study published in the BMJ on Dec 2012, signed off on by Zahi Hawass, that found that Ramses III's haplgroup was E1b1a, today much rarer in Modern Egypt. BMJ: " using the Whit Atheys haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a." 83.84.100.133 (talk) 08:44, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

All we need is academic studies discussing the genetic history of Egypt. I don't know if you are a new person or one of the many sock and meatpuppets suggesting this, but in any case neither you nor any of them have come up with any making the argument you want to make. Note that I don't care if his father was an Inuit or a Zulu, I'm just interested in the academic integrity of this article. Doug Weller talk 15:23, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Ramses III and the Amarna Dynasty

Their DNA results should be part of the article on the DNA History of Egypt. The study is remarkable, because it shows Ramses III has haplogroup E1b1a, which is now much rarer in Egypt. In a collage: Ramses III and the rest of the Amarna Dynasty - Tutankhamon, Amenhotep III, possibly Tiye and Akhenaton. Sources: DNA Tribes Digest Feb 1 2013 and DNA Tribes Digest Jan 1 2012. The study published in the BMJ on Dec 2012, signed off on by Zahi Hawass, that found that Ramses III's haplgroup was E1b1a, today much rarer in Modern Egypt. BMJ: " using the Whit Atheys haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a." 83.84.100.133 (talk) 08:44, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

All we need is academic studies discussing the genetic history of Egypt. I don't know if you are a new person or one of the many sock and meatpuppets suggesting this, but in any case neither you nor any of them have come up with any making the argument you want to make. Note that I don't care if his father was an Inuit or a Zulu, I'm just interested in the academic integrity of this article. Doug Weller talk 15:23, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Problems With The 2017 Study

The problem with the 2017 study in Nature is one of analysis. The problem is that they shoveled the New Kingdom, 3rd Intermediary, the Assyrian period and the Persian period into a category called Pre-Ptolemaic, or pre-Greek.

Nature: "According to the radiocarbon dates (Supplementary Data 1, see also ref. 18), the samples can be grouped into three time periods: Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman Period."

Clearly these mummies are not representative of the Ancient Egyptian mummies of the pre-Dynastic, Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom periods. Even more importantly, it is not clear how many of the mummies in the 'Pre-Ptolemaic' category were from the New Kingdom period, as opposed to the 3rd Intermediary and especially the Late or Assyrian period (671 BC) and Persian (525 BC) period that preceded the Greek period (305 BC). Clearly mummies from such a broad period of time as 'Pre-Ptolemaic' should not be labeled 'Ancient Egyptian'.

Secondly, all mummies are from the same location. There is no guarantee that they are representative of mummies outside of that one location. It is not a broad overview of Ancient Egyptian mummies from various periods and locations. Therefore to make any claim about Ancient Egyptian mummies based on this study is unwarranted.

Third, these mummies are from 2 collections in Germany, and one can only hope that through 2 World Wars they were and remained correctly labeled.

NATURE: "All 166 samples from 151 mummified individuals (for details of the 90 individuals included in the later analysis, see Supplementary Data 1) used in this study were taken from two anthropological collections at the University of Tübingen and the Felix von Luschan Skull Collection, which is now kept at the Museum of Prehistory of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung preußischer Kulturbesitz (individuals: S3533, S3536, S3544, S3552, S3578, S3610)."

Also, the narrowness of this study was acknowledged by one of the study's co-authors, Johannes Krause:

CNN: "While the study might be limited in scope, the team believes it has made some technical breakthroughs. "I expect there will be a ton of ancient Egyptian mummy genomes (mapped) in the next couple of years," Krause said, adding that "multiple groups" are following his team's lead. "There's always more research we can do. This is not the end. It's just the beginning."

83.84.100.133 (talk) 14:28, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

We can only go by what reliable sources state. Find some and come back. At least it disproves the whole “Egypt was an exclusively black” society. 2A00:23C4:3E0F:4400:8933:74F9:D44C:4363 (talk) 20:55, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

--

Here's another problem with the Nature study: according to PLOS Genetics, the non-Nile Valley (white) component in Northeast Africa came from the Arab invasion after 500 AD. This is in direct opposition of the Nature study's claim (it's in the title) that a Sub-Saharan element arrived in Egypt after the Roman period.

PLOS Genetics: "We investigate genomic diversity of northeast African populations and found a clear bimodal distribution of variation, correlated with geography, and likely driven by Eurasian admixture in the wake of migrations along the Nile. This admixture process largely coincides with the time of the Arab conquest, spreading in a southbound direction along the Nile and the Blue Nile."

Not only that, but they continue:

"Compared to current times, groups that are ancestral to the current-day Nilotes likely inhabited a larger area of northeast Africa prior to the migration from the Middle East as their ancestry component can still be found in a large area." https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006976#pgen-1006976-t001

Nilotes being genetically the same as the Darfurians and Nuba of today, as shown in figure 3 (Nature - The Genetics of East African populations: a Nilo-Saharan component in the African genetic landscape). They admixture in exactly the same way, in steps K=2, K=3, K=4, K=5. Same with the Beja-Ethiopian-Sudanese Arab-Nubian population of the Nile Valley. https://media.nature.com/m685/nature-assets/srep/2015/150528/srep09996/images_hires/srep09996-f3.jpg

That greater area would include Egypt, Canaan, etc. - the people and regions described from visual observation (no genetics or carbon dating were available at the time) as the sons of Ham, which means Black, in Genesis 10 in the 1st millennium BC. 83.84.100.133 (talk) 15:29, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

If a study from modern DNA claims something that's contradicted by securely dated ancient DNA, then it's the modern DNA study that's wrong. Never mind the Egyptian mummies, there's Eurasian(-ish) admixture in Kenya in 2000 BC. Modern interpretations of legendary genealogical theories from ancient texts are really not a sound guide to ancient genetics. Also, broad genetic categories do not correlate well with appearance (skin colour etc), which is affected by adaptation to specific environments over time. Someone could in principle be more or less "black" in appearance but wholly West Eurasian genetically (consider what Andamanese negritos look like). Megalophias (talk) 22:24, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

However if ancient eyewitness accounts coincide with modern genetics, that's a confirmation. And sure people could look Black and have all kinds of haplogroups and STR's, however that's because those are still related. The reason the Andamanese Islanders look like the Pygmies, is because they are both genetically related to eachother - likely 35,000 years ago, and both have since remained extremely isolated. And there are specific genes for skin pigmentation deletion (SLC24A5, SLC45A2 and OCA2), which are either present or not. In Europe SLC24A5 arrived with the Yamnaya or Mound Builders from Russia, SLC45A2 with the Early European Farmers. Before that, it was absent among the European Hunter Gatherers, who again looked like the Pygmies. Why? Because they came from Africa. Also, spontaneous in place mutation is more associated with fast life cycle micro-organisms. Most of the time when a new gene is expressed at a population level, it's because it's already there at a lower frequency. 83.84.100.133 (talk) 12:40, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Everyone comes from Africa. Andamanese are not any closer to Africans than any other non-Africans are. They separated much more than 35 000 years ago. European hunter-gatherers didn't look like Pygmies and again were not any more related to them than other non-Africans are. You are mistaken about when those pigmentation variants reached Europe. Ancient written accounts aren't photographs, they have to be interpreted. In any case, this is not the place for detailed discussions. Try asking or searching on a discussion forum. Megalophias (talk) 19:54, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Everyone comes from Africa, which means that until Sapiens left Africa 50,000 years ago, everyone was African, and Africans had the Pygmy phenotype, represented by the most isolated populations like the Pygmies of the Ituri rainforest, the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the Andamanese in the Indian Ocean, Negritos of the Malaysian rainforest and the Philipines' islands. The European or Western Hunter Gatherers were best represented by the so-called Venus statues they left behind. They were obviously less isolated and were absorbed into later waves of Indo-European migrations, specifically the Early European Farmers from Anatolia, the Yamnaya or Mound Builders from Russia, and the Ancient North Eurasians from Siberia. CARTA: Ancient DNA and Human Evolution – Johannes Krause: Ancient European Population History. European Hunter Gatherers are part of all European populations' dna - see the light green element in Figure 2 a. Also, this is a very cool graph showing how the Negritos, Papuans and Melanesians do and don't relate to eachother. Papuans are most like Andamanese. See Figure 2.Discerning the Origins of the Negritos, First Sundaland People: Deep Divergence and Archaic Admixture. The fact that the Andamanese don't admixture with anyone shows they were there first and of course were isolated for a very long time. 83.84.100.133 (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

--

Professor S.O.Y. Keita, Alain Anselin et al respond to the Nature study, and find several problems with their interpretation. Most relevant to their dismissal of PCR testing, including of the Amarna mummies:

Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt: Further discussion https://osf.io/ecwf3/

1) sampling and methodology, 2) historiography and 3) definitions as they relate to populations, origins and evolution.

Relevant to the suppression of the DNA results of Ramses III, Tutankhamon, etc. from Wikipedia:

"●The authors completely dismiss the results of PCR methods used on AE remains. As a Habicht et al.4 states, PCR based methods were used successfully on mummified Egyptian cats and crocodiles without creating extensive debate. Results that are likely reliable are from studies that analyzed short tandem repeats (STRs) from Amarna royal mummies5 (1,300 BC), and of Ramesses III (1,200 BC)6; Ramesses III had the Y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a, an old African lineage7. Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with pop Affiliator18 based on the same published data 5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA” which is not the only way to be “African” a point worth repeating."

There is much more in this comment worth reading, so check it out. 83.84.100.133 (talk) 23:22, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

The mummies came from pretty much the dead center of the ancient Egyptian Nile river - how is that not a good representation of what the ancient population would have been like? They had no cars back then, airplanes, or anything remotely close to that so travel was extremely restricted. The study itself is extremely strong. It also points to other obvious conclusions based upon it, such as the lack of Sub-Saharan DNA in the ancient sample would mean that there would be even LESS Sub-Saharan DNA the more one would travel north towards the Mediterranean coast from that point of the Nile river. The DNA results really just verify a known historical fact that is often not mentioned but should be - and that is that the Arabs did a very heavy slave trade of Sub-Saharan Africans after they conquered Byzantine Egypt - and the Sub-Saharan ancestry comes from that relatively recent point in time and was not there in ancient times in significant percentages at all. The trans-Saharan slave trade was more extensive than the one in the New World so it was not a small trade in people at all, we are seeing the DNA legacy of that in many modern populations in Egypt and other places of the Near East that took part in that trade, including even Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Southern Iran, Yemen, along with Egypt. 2600:1700:1EC1:30C0:3113:BAED:43B1:DEE6 (talk)

The two images

The two images shown in the article are misleading and give too much undue weight to the 2017 study (which 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), and they give the impression that modern egyptians are nothing like ancient egyptians, which virtually all scientists deny, and confirm the genetic continuity of Egyptians (see the article). The second image is especially weird, as it suggests modern egyptians have more connection with central and western africa (and southern africa!) than with western asia and north africa, which is a laughable claim. Mohamed^Talk 18:50, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, the caption on the second picture is just wrong. That image is showing, to put it simply, what you'd mix the Abusir Egyptians with to get modern Egyptians. The most notable difference between Abusir and modern Egyptians, according to this particular method, is that modern Egyptians have more Sub-Saharan African ancestry, so that's what it shows as the other source population for modern Egyptians. But in this model modern Egyptians would be about 92% Abusir Egyptian and 8% Sub-Saharan African. Megalophias (talk) 02:44, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

If anyone wants to restore the previous pictures and captions please explain why this is an improvement. The first picture does not show admixture, it shows shared drift. The second does show admixture; if it's going to be included it needs a good explanation though, the original caption was worse than nothing. Megalophias (talk) 20:42, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Gourdine et al

" the same article, Gourdine et al analyzed 8 Y-DNA markers from nine ancient Egyptian mummies (18th and 20th dynasties), concluding that eight of them have largely predominant sub-Saharan ancestry and one has 58.3% Eurasian ancestry and 41.7% sub-Saharan ancestry." - I can't access the article in question, but this does not sound right: Y markers generally don't give a mix of ancestry, but a single line. Could someone who has access check this? Megalophias (talk) 15:55, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@Megalphias: here's the 3rd and latest version.[1] Note the word 'version'. This is on a preprint service offered by the Center for Open Science, ie it hasn't yet been reliably published, so I'll remove it. Of course even when and if published we should wait to see what response there is in the academic community. Doug Weller talk 16:41, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Recent Edits by Dealmeida87

User Dealmeida87 changed data that suggested "North East African haplogroups are predominant in the South but the predominant haplogroups in the North are characteristic of North African and West Eurasian populations" to make it "that haplotypes from Central/West Africa, East Africa and North Africa are predominant in the South but the predominant haplogroups in the North are characteristic of North African and West Eurasian populations, with a significant minority of East African haplotypes and a minimal percentage of Central/West Africa haplotypes", and he didn't give any reason for that edit, so I removed it. Also I removed "Recent studies have found out that modern Egyptians (both Christians and Muslims) are the direct descendants of the Egyptians of Ancient Egypt. Other studies, however, have shown a wide predominance in modern egyptians of Near Eastern lineages related to Islamic expansion.", because the first sentence is too simplistic and ignores sizeable foreign influences, while the second sentence is cherrypicking and doesn't give an honest brief about what the sources say, and ignores other influences while giving undue weight to a single event. Also the whole paragraph was unneccessary because the subject is already explained in detail before it, so there's no need to give a summary in the end, specialy if it's an unaccurate one Mohamed^Talk 18:44, 17 December 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Memelord0 (talk • contribs)

inconsistent

Or incomplete. The table shows J1 and J2 haplogroups. There is no article discussing them. The J haplogroup article discusses J-M304. Please do your homework, resolve this, and either expand the J haplogroup article to include J1 and J2, or change the table here to correspond to the existing article. 100.15.127.199 (talk) 19:21, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Why is this study not included? But the Abusir mummies study is?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FPtvOShHeCRawqFuFrK2gsN5VPP0tkE4/view?usp=drivesdk Allanana79 (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Allanana79: what study? Please give enough information for a citation, I'm not going to request access to your Google Drive, or anyone else's I don't know personally. Doug Weller talk 17:06, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Rameses study: original research

Another user, Pullbasket continues to include another unrelated study to suggest that Rameses III's haplogroup was E1b1b when the academic source cited: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.17.431423v1.full neither states this or makes reference to the 2012 Hawass study. This user or other users needs to stop inputing original research. None of the academic sources have made this claim. The sub-section only includes the DNA results of ancient mummies which have been tested and published. WikiUser4020 (talk) 09:38, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Its not an unrelated study. It is the same exact Y-chromosomal data in the 2012 Hawass study put into the most advanced up to date haplogroup predictor there is today (Nevgen). E1b1a is also absent in Christian period Nubian genomes indicating it was not native to the Nile valley as a whole not just Egypt. You (WikiUser4020) have also made 43 edits on this article in the last 31 days possibly vandalizing this article.Pullbasket (talk) 22:43, 26 February 2022 (UTC)Striking sockpuppet comment. Generalrelative (talk) 07:19, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Proposed graph

I recently included this (1) graph in the "2017 DNA study" section. However, User:Generalrelative removed it, stating: "This graph gives WP:UNDUE emphasis to a single, non-representative study, thus giving the causal reader a misleading impression of the state of mainstream scholarly understanding".
In my opinion, the graph did not give undue or misleading emphasis, because it wasn't the lead image; it was specifically illustrating the section on the 2017 study, and the caption clearly explained that it was only representing the results of a study, not the totality of scholarship.
The point of images on Wikipedia is to enhance understanding, and the graph clearly does just that. Where the article talks nebulously about "Anatolia" and "North Africa", the graph represents the data in a striking visual format. I think it adds to the readability and approachability of the article. Ficaia (talk) 20:29, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I think my argument stands, and no, the caption did not specify that the image was only illustrating one study. The caption you added read Shared drift and mixture analysis of ancient Egyptian mummies with other ancient and modern and populations. The affinity is strongest (in red) with ancient populations of the Near East. But even if the caption were to be fixed to highlight the fact that these results only represent a set of mummies from a single late-period site, analyzed by a single study, I would still argue that illustrating this study (twice!) where other studies are not illustrated at all tends to lend this one study and its findings WP:UNDUE weight. As it stands, I would argue, that study is already given UNDUE weight and should therefore be trimmed to a point of WP:BALANCE with the others. Generalrelative (talk) 20:39, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

@Generalrelative: There aren't that many studies on ancient DNA in general, mainly for technical reasons, and the 2017 study had a unique methodology and is the largest study mentioned in the article (I think), so I'd be opposed to removing any actual data from that section. More concise wording would be fine though. However, I repeat my main point that the second graph helps represent the data to the reader (who should be our first concern). Whereas the first graph is somewhat inscrutable to a layperson, the second puts the places mentioned on a physical map: very helpful to visual learners.

On second glance, the caption does does come across as authoritative, when it shouldn't (in my defence, I copied it from a previous version of another article without looking at it too closely). But the caption could be rewritten to emphasise that this is just one study. I.e., Results from one limited study of 30 mummies and their genetic affinity with other populations. Perhaps we could also find a general/neutral lead image for visual balance. Maybe the Cole (2) graph? If you're unwilling to budge, I guess I'll leave it for others to opine if they wish. Ficaia (talk) 21:24, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds like a better solution, to simply amend the caption rather than deleting an image that illustrates what is in the accompanying text. I can understand why this image has no place in the Egyptian race controversy article and was rightfully removed. However, it is entirely relevant in this article next to a recent comparative study of the ancient and modern Egyptian genome (based on a limited number of mummies, of course). I vote that we add it back to the article with the newly proposed caption offered by Ficaia. Pericles of Athens^Talk 07:20, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the graph is most appropriate here, as this article is specifically about DNA studies. There aren't that many studies on ancient DNA to begin with, and the 2017 study is the biggest such study mentioned in this article, so illustrating the study fully is appropriate. We now have 3 editors voting for inclusion, 1 voting against. I'm unsure if that's strong enough support to re-add the graph, so I'll leave it to another editor. Ficaia (talk) 09:04, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I vote to add the graph here, with a properly descriptive caption. The Population history of Egypt article should carry only a summary of this article, with a link. Wdford (talk) 10:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Looks like y'all have a rough consensus on the matter so I won't stand in the way of re-adding the graph. I'll note that I still disagree for the reasons I've stated above however. Generalrelative (talk) 15:48, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

In that case I've added the map back with an amended caption based on the proposal by User:Ficaia, mentioning how it is based specifically on the 2017 study alone. Pericles of Athens^Talk 17:03, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Pericles of Athens. I think the new wording is much better. Generalrelative (talk) 18:47, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Gourdine, Keita and Anselin 2018 Source

The genetic evidence cited in this academic source was rejected on previous grounds because it was stated that the source was not published in a peer-reviewed publication. However, the authors list the journal ANKH and publication date 2019-2020 in the footnote sections. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327065612_Ancient_Egyptian_Genomes_from_northern_Egypt_Further_discussion

Gourdine's paper is listed in the journal here: http://www.ankhonline.com/ankh_n_28-29_cover%204.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiUser4020 (talk • contribs) 20:29, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

https://www.academia.edu/43955341/Ankh_n_28_29_JP_JL_Gourdine_SOY_Keita_A_Anselin_Ancient_Egyptian_genomes_pp. (The journal Ankh and the publication series n28-29)

This is the journal link (ANKH Journal of Egyptology and African Civilisations): http://www.ankhonline.com/revue.htm

Hence, the genetic evidence provided should be included in this article and related articles.WikiUser4020 (talk) 10:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

"Sub-Saharan African"

I have seen many instances of the term "Sub-Saharan African" being used here in the article. This usage has to be thoroughly checked. The "Sub-Saharan African" populations are genetically highly diverse, and lumping them together is a crypto-racialist surrogate for the obsolete concept of a distinct "Negroid" race. And we don't want have races sneaked into anthropological WP articles through the backdoor. If a source uses the term, it may be cited as such. If a source does not, it is WP:OR to use the term. Whatever "Sub-Saharan African" population (Nilotic etc.) is mentioned in the source, spell it out one-to-one. –Austronesier (talk) 09:38, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Add: it is at worst a crypto-racialist surrogate for the obsolete concept of a distinct "Negroid" race; at best, it is just sloppy. –Austronesier (talk) 10:10, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier Many of the genetic studies cited do use the terminology "Sub-Saharan", "West Asian" etc. The article removed does make reference to Nilotic populations in southern Egypt. I will rephrase the sentence but please do check the full text of the source. WikiUser4020 (talk) 09:49, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Take it as a caveat against creative additions. I will do both, on a case-by-case decision: remove entire texts if they contain parts not supported by the source, or just remove the unsupported parts. –Austronesier (talk) 09:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Here's another one for you[2]. The removal of the unrelated text was good, but the addition of text not supported by the source is bad. It is not "bad faith" from my side; it's a persistent pattern of your editing. You're not the only one here misusing DNA/aDNA and other sources for the sake of explicitly or implicitly racializing the Ancient Egyptians. This is a general problem which has to be critically addressed. But unlike others, you've been doing it at high speed in many articles for the last weeks/months. –Austronesier (talk) 11:55, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier Please read the whole text again. It states on page 795: "3. Results For Nakht-Ankh, mtDNA enrichment yielded 5,707,546 sequence reads, of which 6138 mapped to the rCRS (Andrews et al., 1999). Forty SNPs were observed with a mean coverage of 18.3×, spanning the entire mtDNA (Table 1). Shotgun sequencing gave 1488 reads mapping to the rCRS covering 30 polymorphic sites with 2–14× coverage, in each case agreeing with the SNP identified from the enriched sample. For Khnum-Nakht, 76,253,577 reads were obtained from the enriched library, 5422 mapping to the rCRS, revealing the same forty SNPs as typed for Nakht-Ankh, with 15.5× mean coverage (Table 1). No high quality reads were obtained from the shotgun data for Khnum-Nakht. 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"

http://xn--c1acc6aafa1c.xn--p1ai/wp-content/uploads/Drosou-ea-18-DNA-of-Egyptian-mummy.pdf WikiUser4020 (talk) 12:04, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I apologize, that was a quick shot from my part. I missed the passage in the paper because it comes pretty non-sequitur in the original text and in the Wiki-text that you have added. It seems that no-one has ever contested that the two individuals were not locals from Egypt and thus not Africans. –Austronesier (talk) 12:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@AustronesierNo problem. I am just stating the results of the study and providing the full context. I may be sloppy at times but I will at least try to ensure that all credible, peer-reviewed sources are accurately represented. WikiUser4020 (talk) 12:30, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

I'm wondering if we need criteria for this article. To some extent it looks like random entries, perhaps added to prove a point, which is the sort of thing that is common in DNA articles.

We've got "2012 Ramesses III" - a comparison of two mummies. Now I know that this has been a bone of contention for years with various editors trying to add it to prove sub-Saharan ancestry, although it was never a study meant to do anything other than compare the mummies.

"2018 Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht" - again comparing two mummies in order to discover kinship. This is the entry discussed above. It shows they were African. But what's the point? It says nothing about the general population of Egypt at that time. Of course, nor does the Ramesses III entry.

"2018 mitochondrial DNA of Djehutynakht" Just one mummy this time, another high-status individual. Some original research there also I believe as the second source doesn't seem to be about the mummy.

"2020 Tutankhamun and other mummies of the 18th Dynasty" which is a review article, or rather a recapitulation article as it isn't actually "reviewing" past studies, just reporting them and making comments on the future of molecular Egyptology. Should we really be cherry picking data from it? We can and to some extend to use the studies being discussed.

"2020 Paleogenetic Study of Ancient Mummies at the Kurchatov Institute" a study of three mummies in the Journal Nanotechnology in Russia link to ranking of journal No citations on Google Scholar.[3] And again just some random data.

There's no attempt in the article to relate any of these, they aren't even in chronological order. Doug Weller talk 13:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Blown-up coverage of single studies assembled in a random fashion is a trademark of many badly written pieces about human (a)DNA history in Wikipedia. Of course, the topic of this article is the DNA history of Egypt, so we can allow for a certain degree of detail. But to present recent under- or zero-cited studies in a subsection of their own? I agree that this is too much. Another problem is of course the sampling bias on rulers and other high-status individuals, and also on uniparental genetic markers. A refreshing exception is Schuenemann et al. (2017), which is however highly limited in its geographic scope and – as the authors admit – not necessarily representative for all of ancient Egypt. –Austronesier (talk) 14:35, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes. We wouldn't use DNA studies of the aristocracy of Norman Britain for Genetic history of the British Isles. Which maybe should be a bit of a model for this article? Not entirely of course, because Bryan Sykes is given far to much coverage there (see Bryan Sykes#Modern evidence) and I don't think Jefferson, and probably not the Revis family, belong in the article. Doug Weller talk 15:04, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Thank you btw for pointing me to the Genetic history of the British Isles article. I was literally rubbing my eyes to see that there was nothing about the migration of Neolithic farmers :) –Austronesier (talk) 21:35, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Examining the accuracy of some of the citations; making the statements strictly follow the cited studies

I went through some of the cited studies and examined them because some of the statements in the article seemed too curtailed to be informative, or too simplified that they can be quite misleading. More additions from the studies are needed to accurately represent the content of these cited studies. I will carefully add more content from these studies in their proper places so that their overall content is accurately reflected, since most often a single short sentence has the potential to mislead, as is the case currently in certain parts. I will focus on the section "DNA studies on modern Egyptians", and I will stick closely to the phrasing of the studies that I will add content from, as well as making current statements reflect their source more accurately, without the vague phrasing that is borderline OR/interpretation. This is quite the phrase-sensitive article, and statements that are not careful enough can terribly mislead the reader.

In the section "DNA studies on modern Egyptians", to the second paragraph I will first add the numbers of individuals tested from Egypt, Nubia, and southern Sudan, which are 68 Egyptians, 80 Nubians, 76 southern Sudanese. The remark about the historical interaction between Egypt and Nubia, though accurate, should be augmented by the other statements from the study that contrasts and makes this point clearer, as well as an addition to illustrate north-vs.-south diversity of both the Eurasian mtDNA and sub-Saharan mtDNA in the studied groups. So I'll add the following, which is taken directly from the source:
However, there are significant differences between the composition of the mtDNA gene pool of the Egyptian samples and that of the Nubians and southern Sudanese samples. The diversity of the Eurasian mtDNA type was highest in Egypt and lowest in southern Sudan, whereas sub-Saharan was lowest in Egypt and highest in southern Sudan.

To the third paragraph I will strictly add a quote with the following important results that somehow got overlooked by whoever cited this study:
Egypt’s NRY frequency distributions appear to be much more similar to those of the Middle East than to any sub-Saharan African population, suggesting a much larger Eurasian genetic component ... The cumulative frequency of typical sub-Saharan lineages (A, B, E1, E2, E3a, and E3b*) is 9% in Egypt ... whereas the haplogroups of Eurasian origin (Groups C, D, and F–Q) account for 59% [in Egypt].

The fourth one-sentence paragraph and the first two sentences from the fifth paragraph are echoing each other, I will combine them, with a necessary edit, to explain this edit properly I first have to discuss the additions I will make to the rest of the fifth paragraph.

The rest of the fifth paragraph contains two cited studies. The first by Stevanovitch et al. is a study of 58 upper Egyptian individuals including only 34 individuals from Gurna, not "58 upper Egyptians from Gurna" as is currently erroneously stated. So I will fix that first. Now as to everything else that follows, I will rewrite it to reflect what is actually stated in the study, and I will stick closely to what is stated in the study, since what is currently stated in the article is too curtailed and doesn't illustrate clearly on the content of the study. I will add the individuals and the percentages as stated in the study, as well as statements taken directly from the study (see below).
The second cited study by Kivisild et al. is supposed to corroborate the statement "Another study links Egyptians in general with people from modern Eritrea and Ethiopia". I examined this study, and it makes no such statement whatsoever. This is either a misreading or WP:OR, possibly both, with vague use of the verb "links" and less-than-clear placement of the citation in the article; no wonder why this statement has gone unchecked. This study is not about the Egyptians at all and does not study any Egyptian samples, it references the former Stevanovitch et al. Gurna study regarding the relation between the Gurna individuals and the Ethiopian population, but the statement above is not corroborated. This study does not belong here in this article, the Gurna study already says what can be said here. This study should be left out of the article. Thus, the Gurna paragraph will become:
A 2004 mtDNA study of 58 upper Egyptian individuals included 34 individuals from Gurna, a small settlement on the hills opposite Luxor. The 34 individuals from Gurna exhibited the haplogroups: M1 (6/34 individuals, 17.6%), H (5/34 individuals, 14.7%), L1a (4/34 individuals, 11.8%) and U (3/34 individuals, 8.8%). The M1 haplotype frequency in Gurna individuals (6/34 individuals, 17.6%) is similar to that seen in Ethiopian population (20%), along with a West Eurasian component different in haplogroup distribution in the Gurna individuals. However, the M1 haplotypes from Gurna individuals exhibited a mutation that is not present in Ethiopian population; whereas this mutation was present in non-M1 haplotype individuals from Gurna. Nile valley Egyptians do not show the characteristics that were shown by the Gurna individuals.

This brings us back to the fourth paragraph. The fourth paragraph states that "modern Egyptians have genetic affinities primarily with populations of North Africa, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa"; the inclusion of "Horn of Africa" here is based on both studies above, by Stevanovitch et al. and Kivisild et al. But, the Stevanovitch et al. study of Gurna individuals should not be generalized to a statement about the Egyptian population as a whole, and the study itself is very careful in this regard. And as discussed above, the second study by Kivisild et al. doesn't corroborate these specific statements. So, since there is already a discussion in the next paragraph of the Gurna study, Gurna individuals' affinities to Horn of Africa should be left out of this paragraph, and we should just let the Gurna study say what it says, without generalizations; or at least it should be moved to the "and to a lesser extent..." part, which is what I will do, to avoid leaving it out.

The fifth paragraph starts with "Some genetic studies done on modern Egyptians suggest a more distant relationship to sub-Saharan Africans", with a whole-book citation, without indication of what page this statement is taken from, and with overall poor citation of the book without its proper citation info! But, nonetheless, I examined the cited source, and I found no corroboration for this statement; in fact the book affirms the affinity with other North African populations, on page 174, the book clearly states: "In summary, the information available on individual groups in Ethiopia and North Africa is fairly limited but sufficient to show that they are all separate from sub-Saharan Africans and that North Africans and East Africans (such as Ethiopians) are clearly separate". Sub-Sahara comes into context in this book in a discussion of ancient contact and trade between Egypt and African countries in dynastic and Neolithic periods, and this does not belong in the section about the DNA studies of modern Egyptians. So I will substitute the statement above for the erroneous one that is currently in the article, with proper citation and page number, and proper citation info, and a link to the page on Google Books.

Thus, as mentioned, I will combine the fourth paragraph with the first corrected citation from the cited book, and the second sentence from that paragraph, this will become the paragraph:
Other studies have shown that modern Egyptians have genetic affinities primarily with populations of North Africa and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent the Horn of Africa and European populations. Another study states that "the information available on individual groups in Ethiopia and North Africa is fairly limited but sufficient to show that they are all separate from sub-Saharan Africans and that North Africans and East Africans (such as Ethiopians) are clearly separate". In addition, some studies suggest ties with populations in the Middle East, as well as some groups in southern Europe, and a closer link to other North Africans.
This will be followed by the Gurna paragraph mentioned above.

The current sixth paragraph about the origin of M1 is not fully reflecting the cited source. I will make what is already in it more accurate and I will add the other relevant information in that source about the origin of M1 to give a clearer picture. This paragraph will become:
Though there has been much debate of the origins of haplogroup M1 a 2007 study had concluded that M1 has West Asia origins not a Sub Saharan African origin, although the majority of the M1a lineages found outside and inside Africa had a more recent eastern Africa origin, as a result of "the first M1 backflow [from Asia] to Africa, dated around 30,000 [years ago]". The study states that "the most ancient dispersals of M1 occurred in northwestern Africa, reaching also the Iberian Peninsula, instead of Ethiopia", and states that the evidence points to either "that the Near East was the most probable origin of the primitive M1 dispersals, West into Africa and East to Central Asia ... [with] the Sinai Peninsula as the most probable gate of entrance of this backflow to Africa" or "that M1 is an autochthonous North African clad that had its earliest spread in northwestern areas marginally reaching the Near East and beyond". Some authors have proposed the view that the M haplogroup developed in Africa before the 'Out of Africa' event around 50,000 years ago, and dispersed from North Africa 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.
The 2003 Y-chromosome study from this paragraph will be in its own separate paragraph without change.

At the end, I will include a brief mention of the Hollfelder et al. 2017 study (this study ), leaving its already existent detailed discussion to the subsection titled "Coptic Christians of Sudan", since this study also pertains to the general discussion of the DNA studies of the modern Egyptians. Another study that belongs right next to it is the 2020 "Allele frequency comparative study" (this study ), which is surprisingly absent from this article. I will add this one to the subsection "Coptic Christians of Sudan" too.
To the detailed discussion of the Hollfelder et al. 2017 study in the subsection "Coptic Christians of Sudan" I will add the percentages of the European/Middle Eastern ancestry, as well as including the following part about Sudanese Copts from the study: "and that Sudanese Copts have remained relatively isolated since their arrival to Sudan with only low levels of admixture with local northeastern Sudanese groups". I will also change the title of this subsection from "Coptic Christians of Sudan" to just "Coptic Christians", since it it doesn't only discuss the Coptic Christians of Sudan.

As to the subsection "Y-DNA haplogroups", the current opening statement of this subsection will be rewritten to reflect what is stated in the cited study (which I will discuss below). This subsection needs a better opening paragraph, with statements from other studies to give a better picture. The study by Arredi et al. that discusses the Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in North Africa, including Egypt, is cited in the table that follows. The results from this study are illuminating, and succinctly citing the core of its results will give a better picture as well as good opening paragraph, which is what I will do (see below).
As to the current opening statement, it is problematic, since, first of all, it is not made by the study, the study remarks on haplotypes and their frequencies in the North compared to their frequencies in the South; the current opening statement seems to be an interpretation (OR) of the appellation Lucotte uses for the haplogroups, an appellation which is deemed inaccurate as Keita remarks on this study. So, I will rephrase this to what is actually stated in the study, and then follow it immediately by the remarks that Keita makes on it; each with its proper citation immediately following it. Thus, this will be the paragraph:
A study using the Y-chromosome of modern Egyptian males found that the main haplotype V has higher frequency in the North than in the South, whereas haplotype IV is found mainly in the South (near Luxor), haplotype XI also has higher frequency in the South than in the North. Keita remarks on Lucotte's Y-chromosome study on modern Egyptians, which found that haplotypes V, XI, and IV are most common, and states that "a synthesis of evidence from archaeology, historical linguistics, texts, distribution of haplotypes outside Egypt, and some demographic considerations lends greater support to the establishment, before the Middle Kingdom, of the observed distributions of the most prevalent haplotypes V, XI, and IV. It is suggested that the pattern of diversity for these variants in the Egyptian Nile Valley was largely the product of population events that occurred in the late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene through the First Dynasty".

I will add the following from the study by Arredi et al. as an opening paragraph right before the previous paragraph:
A study by Arredi et al. suggests that North African pattern of Y-chromosomal variation, including in Egypt, is largely of Neolithic origin. The study analyzed North African populations, including North Egyptians and South Egyptians, as well as samples from southern Europe, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, and revealed the following conclusions about the male-lineage variation in North Africa: "The lineages that are most prevalent in North Africa are distinct from those in the regions to the immediate north and south: Europe and sub-Saharan Africa ... two haplogroups predominate within North Africa, together making up almost two-thirds of the male lineages: E3b2 and J* (42% and 20%, respectively). E3b2 is rare outside North Africa [amd] haplogroup J reaches its highest frequencies in the Middle East."

And to illustrate on the tables, I will add the following from Keita:
The major downstream mutations within the M35 subclade are M78 and M81. There are also other M35 lineages, e.g., M123. In Egypt, haplotypes VII and VIII are associated with the J haplogroup, which is predominant in the Near East.

A final addition I will make is to the 2017 study by Schuenemann et al.; I will make the following short addition from the study: The age of the ancient Egyptian samples suggests that this 8% increase in African component occurred predominantly within the last 2000 years.

This concludes all the major edits that I will make. I will, however, make other very minor edits; I will make it explicit in certain places in the paragraph discussing the 2017 study by Schuenemann et al. that the increase in African component is 8%, and I will replace "than" by "compared to", "three individuals" by "three ancient Egyptian individuals", and other such minor edits. Masrialltheway (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

More Edits

I will make a few more edits, my aim is still to better represent the cited studies and make the citations more accurate, and to include enough content from them so that the statements in the article do not mislead the reader.

To the 2017 study by Schuenemann et al. I will add the number of the modern Egyptian mtDNA samples used in the study; that is, I will include the statement (taken from the study): The study used 135 modern Egyptian mtDNA samples. I will add two images from the study (supplementary figures are in the "Supplementary Information"), but first, a remark on the current used images. There is currently nothing to be said about the first image of the PCA analysis, it is a good image to use in the article, the caption in the study says "from three ancient Egyptians", so that will be included in the caption.
But as to the second image, it is just a cropped image that is not informative, and actually very misleading, to the reader as to what the original uncropped figure in the study is actually about, since the original figure in the study has a specific context. To be precise, the context in the study is the measuring of shared genetic drift and how the 8% increase in African component bears on it. The original image/figure in the study corresponds to the use of Outgroup f3-statistics to measure shared genetic drift of ancient and modern Egyptians on the one hand with other ancient and modern populations on the other hand; the study clearly states: "We used outgroup f3-statistics for the ancient and modern Egyptians to measure shared genetic drift with other ancient and modern populations", that is generally what Outgroup f3-statistics are used for. To be clear, the estimates in the cropped image do not say what this cropped image strongly makes it seem like they are saying; in other words, and again that is generally what Outgroup f3-statistics are used for, in the study and the original figure, the estimates of the shared drift of the ancient Egyptian samples with the other populations are compared with the estimates of the shared drift of the modern Egyptian samples with the other populations; the latter is presented in the part of the figure that is labeled "b", which is not present in this cropped image of course. Also, based on these estimates, the clustering of the ancient Egyptian samples with Eurasian populations appear to be slightly closer than the clustering of the modern Egyptian samples with Eurasian populations, which is due to the 8% increase in African component, as the study states. It is the misunderstanding of this point in the study that seems to be the crux of a lot of confusion, specially in the media/newspaper articles that have been circling around. Randomly including part of the original figure, that doesn't represent what that figure is about, can be misleading and can have a wrong impress on the reader; even the current caption makes things worse. On the other hand, including the original figure/image would require including an undue large amount of text from the study just to comment on it faithfully. I'm trying to be very careful in removing anything from the article, hence this lengthy discussion. As per the Wikipedia image use policy, cropping is fine in removing irrelevant parts, but not to "throw away information"; the parts that are cropped out here are not irrelevant, the information that is cropped out is integral to this figure, as discussed. This cropped image should not be included in the article. I believe images are very important on Wikipedia, and since the images in this article are of figures, they should be used in tandem to represent the study carefully, since they can mislead the reader even more than bad text. Let alone that this is a figure in a DNA study. I will replace this second image with the following two images. Update: I will add the F_ST (fixation index) figure, which is a geographical mapping of F_ST values based on the analysis of HVR-1 sequences, which is the one that actually measures and visualizes genetic distances. If, as argued by another user, the idea is to add a visual map for the reader, then the F_ST figure is the correct one that should be used, as it is the one that actually depicts the values that measure what the cropped image of the Outgroup f3-statistics misleads the reader about, which is discussed above. Also, the F_ST values are in relation to the entire set of 90 ancient Egyptian samples, but the number of samples is not the point here. You can also see the use of F_ST in other Wikipedia DNA articles, such as the one on Europe for instance. Again, I believe images are very important on Wikipedia, and a single image can mislead even more than bad text.
The first of the two images that I will add is both complementary and contrastive to the PCA analysis image that is already used, and is quite excellent in giving a good overall picture of the clustering in particular, since it is of an image/figure of the PCA analysis using only European samples, and shows how that bears on the clustering. The second image that I will add is the image/figure of the complete results from the ADMIXTUTE analysis; in the currently used image of the PCA analysis, only a subset of the full ADMIXTURE analysis is used (the part labeled "b"); that it is a subset of the full ADMIXTURE analysis is stated in the caption of this image in the study itself. This second image that I will add is informative to the reader in that it shows the full range of the populations analyzed.
Now to the opening description of the study. First off, there is no valid sense in which we can say "international team" here (and there is no need whatsoever to do this), all of the authors are Germany-based or Germans, except from two authors (Poland and UK), and this current opening description just causes reader amazement. The study should be cited as all other studies are cited, i.e., Schuenemann et al. or Schuenemann and colleagues. There is no need for that long description of the study. To reduce the reader's amazement, I will change the description to by Schuenemann et al., just like all other studies are cited.
I will make a minor addition from the Hollfelder et al. study, and a minor addition from Keita, both are outright quotes from the studies. I will make other minor stylistic edits for better readability and accuracy; e.g., the study by Schuenemann et al. says "likely due to" not "possibly due to", so this will be used; and, instead of Keita remarks on... I will start with Remarking on... Keita states..., to eliminate the confusion on who is making the remarking. If I end up making more edits that require a discussion, I will discuss them under this subheading as well, or create another subheading if needed. Masrialltheway (talk) 23:57, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

References

Contextual or chronological?

I have just engaged with the user WikiUser4020 regarding two changes that WikiUser4020 made, one of them was resolved. The second change that WikiUser4020 made is what I'm opening this talk page section for. But, I should first point out that WikiUser4020 tried to project an attitude of pseudo-authority by telling me to seek consensus on the talk page, despite the fact that WikiUser4020 was the one making the change, and therefore it is WikiUser4020's burden to discuss the change on the talk page. That had to be pointed out. I saw no good reason to discuss this with WikiUser4020 further, on WikiUser4020's talk page perhaps, since WikiUser4020 seems to just insist. Hence this talk page section.

The edit WikiUser4020 made, which is the edit I'm contesting here, was the change of the order of the four sentences in the third paragraph in the section "DNA studies on modern Egyptians" from (note that sentences are separated by >):
"Luis et al. (2004) found that..." > "E1b1b subclades 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"..." > "The study by Luis et al. (2004) found that Egypt's NRY frequency...".
To the following order of sentences (WikiUser4020 changed the order of the last two sentences):
"Luis et al. (2004) found that..." > "E1b1b subclades are ... believed to have originated in either the Middle East, North Africa, or the Horn of Africa." > "The study by Luis et al. (2004) found that Egypt's NRY frequency...". > "Cruciani et al. (2007) suggests that E-M78, E1b1b predominant subclade in Egypt, originated in "Northeastern Africa"..."

WikiUser4020's reason is that the last two sentences should be ordered chronologically by the date of the studies "like all other studies". I explained to WikiUser4020 in the edit summaries that in the case at hand the logical order is contextual not chronological, the context here being the "origin of E1b1b" and the flow of information thereon, and that the "Cruciani et al." sentence about the origin of E1b1b should follow the preceding sentence on the origin of E1b1b. This is different from the chronological order of studies whose results are presented separately, which is not the case here, Cruciani et al. is not presented separately, it is merely cited as an in-text attribution to provide a contextual piece of information in the flow of information about the origin of E1b1b, it is not used as a study with its own separately presented results, in which case WikiUser4020's insistence on the chronological order would have made some sense. WikiUser4020 insisted, however, adamantly. I'm not sure if WikiUser4020 is missing the point or dismissing it! So, I am seeking to see if other editors agree that the contextual order should be restored, because the other order is now causing an unpleasant break in the flow of information in this paragraph. While this is a minor issue that I am not going to obsess over, I personally believe that in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia a good flow of information makes a difference, however minor the change. Masrialltheway (talk) 23:42, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

@Masrialltheway Please do not make suggestions of bad-faith with the assertion that I am seeking to "project an attiude of pseudo-authority". I have made it clear repeatedly that I am not the one making the change but the article page follows a chronological order and this is can be seen with the DNA sub-section which features studies from 2012 until 2020 that is formatted in that clear, chronological order.

Could you expand how Cruciani (2007) is cited as an "in-text attribution" as it is a separate and later study from the Luis (2004) ?, I did suggest on the talk page that as an alternative, you could include quotations from the Cruciani (2007) which comment on the preceding study to offer that context but the articles should still follow a chronological order as evident across the page article. Also, I think it would be sensible to gain a consensus judgement on this to ensure that articles are not presented in a format that suggests original research.

I've just re-read the page and Cruciani is cited in relation to the origin of the E1b1b across the regions in Middle East, Northern and Eastern Africa but not in explicit relation to the Luis (2004) study. It is a separate study and unless it makes a clear case supporting the findings of Luis, then this is arguably original research as Cruciani does not seem to be supporting the quoted statement on "NRY frequency distribution" which your suggested format would suggest but only makes reference to the origin of E1b1b haplogroup.

In addition, I looked at page history and checked up on the oldest page (February 2013) which features the referenced studies and the formatting was originally in a chronological order as seen below.

"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 Near 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", which in the study refers specifically to Egypt and Libya [2][34]".

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DNA_history_of_Egypt&oldid=536543540#DNA_studies_on_modern_Egyptians

WikiUser4020 (talk) 16:02, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

@WikiUser4020: You are again missing/dismissing the point. You are repeating yourself; what you are saying is stated and readily addressed above in my comment, so is your question about the in-text attribution. Other editors' comments are what I'm seeking here. Do not focus on the "you are the one making the change" part of my comment and try to disprove it, it is a passing remark, and is now immaterial, since I have already opened this talk page section. You have already stated your position on the order, repeatedly, and I have stated mine. Wait for other editors comments if they so wish.

As to your other erroneous remarks, Cruciani et al. is cited for the statement about the origin of E1b1b, and Luis et al. is cited for the quote "Egypt's NRY frequency...". Nothing whatsoever about this has anything whatsoever to do with WP:OR, take the time to think about this and take another more careful look at what OR is, because you are making a good faith blunder here. Be careful and don't make erroneous comments on the Wikipedia guidelines. Cruciani et al. is cited for the statement that it is cited for, and nothing else; i.e.: it is cited for the statement "Cruciani et al. (2007) suggests that E-M78, E1b1b predominant subclade in Egypt, originated in "Northeastern Africa", with a corridor for...". It does not comment on the quote "Egypt's NRY frequency..." by Luis et al., nor is it supposed to, nor does it need to, nor is it cited for it in the article, nor is it used to comment on it, nor does any of the two orders suggest that it does. Again, this has nothing whatsoever to do with OR. Please be careful with your comments on the guidelines, because the administrators take erroneous comments on the Wikipedia guidelines seriously. Do not attempt to misuse the guidelines in the fashion suggested in your comment, it will not go well.

Now, take a careful look at the "February 2013 revision" that you just cited, it is exactly the order of these two sentence that I'm arguing for. I think you need to take a step back and re-think what you are saying, and try to better understand my comments about the orders and their distinction. Because you are making genuine blunders. And please do not repeat yourself. Masrialltheway (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

@Masrialltheway I have had to repeat myself because you have not clearly addressed the points I have raised.

You asserted that I am seeking to "project an attiude of pseudo-authority". This is an expression of bad faith.

You are implying that I attempting to "misuse the guidelines". I have not and if you had read my comments clearly I stated this could arguably be seen as original research.

Cruciani (2007) does not comment on the Luis (2004) quotation as you have acknowledged hence it does not follow it should adhere to your suggested structure.

The February 2013 page version proves the point I'm making which is that Luis (2004) should precede the Cruciani (2007) study in a chronological order. Did you read the quotation or the link provided ?, That was the original structure. This is not the same as the structure you proposed which featured a quotation after the Cruciani study from the Luis study (2004) which is not directly related to the Cruciani study. The quotation should follow the Luis study (2004) to provide context and the Cruciani should follow this is in chronological order as was the original format from 2013.

You opened this talk page based upon my recommendations as I stated the sources cited in this page article follow a chronological pattern. Please do not patronize other users when I have made several revisions to your edits and you have made clear suggestions of bad faith.

I have emphasised that collaborative editing would be preferred, but suggestions of bad faith and a patronizing tone which seems to lack merit, makes any dialogue increasingly difficult. As stated before, I will leave this to consensus judgement before responding to further comments but I have provided supporting evidence on the original format. WikiUser4020 (talk) 18:17, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

@WikiUser4020: Do not erroneously re-state my argument; the study does not comment on Luis et al., but my argument for the order is not based on that at all, not even close. The premise of my argument is that the statement "E1b1b subclades are ... believed to have originated in either the Middle East, North Africa, or the Horn of Africa." and the statement "Cruciani et al. (2007) suggests that E-M78, E1b1b predominant subclade in Egypt, originated in "Northeastern Africa"..." should contextually follow each other in this order. This, and the reasons for it, are stated clearly in my first comment, and have nothing to do with my statement that: Cruciani et al. does not comment on the quote "Egypt's NRY frequency..." by Luis et al., this latter statement was merely a response to your erroneous remarks. Do not try to re-state other editors positions in your own erroneous terms, let other editors state their position, I have stated mine clearly in my first comment, and I believe you are competent enough to understand it if you take the time to. Other editors can read every single word that I have written and they will readily see what I'm saying. This is extremely counterproductive, and getting sidetracked from the main minor issue of the order of the sentences. I will refrain from responding to any repetitions or any further erroneous remarks from you. Let other editors comment on the minor issue at hand (i.e., the order of the sentences) if they so wish, and do not flood the section with side remarks, specially when they are completely erroneous and are not carefully thought out. This is not a patronizing tone, and I'm not here for you to evaluate my merit. Masrialltheway (talk) 19:16, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I just perceived of a simple work-around which averts WikiUser4020's confused insistence on the "chronological" order (which does not apply here as I have already explained above). Instead of moving Cruciani et al.'s statement on the origin of E1b1b subclade to follow the other statement on the origin of E1b1b subclades, I will keep Cruciani et al. at the end, averting WikiUser4020's confused insistence, and I will move the results from Luis et al. to be next to each other at the beginning, thus moving the statement on the origin of E1b1b subclades to precede Cruciani et al.'s statement on the origin of E1b1b subclades, with Cruciani et al. remaining at the end. The paragraph will become:
"A study by Luis et al. (2004) found that..." > "The study found that Egypt's NRY frequency..." > "E1b1b subclades 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"..."
This preserves the good contextual flow of information (i.e., the results from Luis et al., followed by the statements on E1b1b subclades). I will proceed to make the edit, since it is a work-around that resolves the issue, and it is actually better than the two other orders above. Masrialltheway (talk) 19:01, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Trimming Schuenemann et al

The study by Schuenemann et al. is given quite the prominence in the article (other editors have indeed pointed out already on this talk page that Schuenemann et al. is given heavy weight). This heavy weight seems to be a remnant of earlier attempts to overemphasize the results of this study as well as attempts to counter this overemphasis, which resulted in some degree of overflow. I'm against removing any information from the current presentation of the study, as attempts to do this seem likely to misrepresent it and give an inaccurate impression of its results. And there is no issue with the current presentation of its results on ancient Egyptians. The study however need to be made more concise, which I will do to a certain degree, by making the statements compact without losing their accuracy and without leaving out any information. There are also certain redundancies and certain repetitions, these will be fixed by making the statements more compact which will allow for presenting the content from the first and second paragraphs in tandem and therefore eliminating these repetitions. So, I have gone over the presentation sentence by sentence to see which sentences can be made more concise.

The first sentence is wordy, specifically this part: "described the extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals. I will simply rephrase this to the much shorter: extracted DNA from 151 Egyptian mummies".

As to the second sentence, the difficulty in obtaining ancient DNA due to contamination is already mentioned in the opening paragraph of the "Ancient DNA" section, no need to repeat it, this only makes the first paragraph in Schuenemann et al. needlessly larger; besides, no need to echo the study's statement about its own reliability of its methods, many DNA studies do that very same thing, we should stick to the meat of the study without bloating it with such statements. So the following will be left out: "Obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field of archaeogenetics and these samples provided 'the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods'."

As to the third sentence, the time period to which the samples belong will be phrased slightly more concisely, to become: "The samples are from the time periods: Late New Kingdom, Ptolemaic, and Roman."

In the fourth sentence, the statement: "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", will be rephrased to the following slightly more accurate statement: "Complete mtDNA sequences from 90 samples as well as genome-wide data from three ancient Egyptian individuals were successfully obtained and were compared with other ancient and modern datasets."

As to the sixth sentence, in the statement "The study found that the ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mitochondrial profiles throughout the examined period (pre Ptolemaic, Ptolemaic and Roman) and cluster close to each other in their analyses, supporting genetic continuity across the 1,300-year transect", I will remove the repeated mention of the time periods from which the samples are taken, and I will slightly shorten it to get the point across without superfluity. This sentence will thus become: "The ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mtDNA haplogroup profiles, and cluster together, supporting genetic continuity across the 1,300-year transect."

After making the above edits, which will make the first paragraph more concise without leaving anything out, I will combine the first paragraph with the second paragraph, presenting thus the mtDNA and the Y-DNA results in tandem and avoiding the need for the repetition that arises from presenting each in a separate paragraph. Thus the affinities with near eastern population will be stated once, and the continuity between the ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset across the 1,300-year transect will be stated once, this will present the results more compactly without losing any accuracy; e.g., after presenting both mtDNA results and Y-DNA results, instead of stating "The mtDNA analyses reveal higher affinities..." it will be stated as "The analyses reveal higher affinities...", avoiding the repetition. This combining of the first two paragraphs will result in a single paragraph that is the same size as the current first paragraph, without any loss of information or accuracy.

As to the third paragraph on the absolute estimates of sub-Saharan African component, the 8% percent increase in African component is already mentioned, both in the preceding paragraph as well as twice in this paragraph, there is no need to keep repeating it, so it will be retained in this paragraph after the absolute estimates, we don't need to copy-paste the study when there is no need to and when things can be stated more concisely without loss of accuracy, which is needed here. Thus I will start this paragraph with absolute estimates, followed by the concise "which show an 8% increase in African component". Also in stating the absolute estimates, the study says "and" not "which is lower than", which actually leads to a phrasing that is slightly more concise, so this will be used, nothing will be lost here, since it will be followed by "which show an 8% increase in African component", and then the rest of the paragraph.

The final thing I will do is a concise addition regarding the modern Egyptian samples used in the study. The ancient Egyptian samples are fairly addressed in the first paragraph and with later remarks on their nature, so given that this is a Wikipedia article on the DNA of Egypt, the modern Egyptian samples should receive the same treatment in line with the remarks on the ancient Egyptian samples. The study by Schuenemann et al. states that it uses 100 samples from modern Egyptians taken from Pagani et al., and 35 samples from el-Hayez Western Desert Oasis taken from Kujanova et al. Thus I will add the following which is taken from Schuenemann et al. and the other two studies that Schuenemann et al. uses samples from: "The 135 modern Egyptian samples were: 100 from modern Egyptians taken from a study by Pagani et al., and 35 from el-Hayez Western Desert Oasis taken from a study by Kujanova et al. The 35 samples from el-Hayez Western Desert Oasis, whose population is described by the Kujanova et al. study as a mixed, relatively isolated, demographically small but autochthonous population, were already known from that study to have a relatively high sub-Saharan African component, which is more than 11% higher than the African component in the 100 modern Egyptian samples." The citations from the Schuenemann et al. study and the two studies it used the samples from will be respectively placed after each of these sentences.
As a side remark here on the talk page, the Kujanova et al. study is very careful in characterizing the population from el-Hayez Western Desert Oasis, and separates them clearly from Nile Valley modern Egyptians; in fact, I made the addition very concise, whereas the Kujanova et al. study describes this population at length, and makes other further remarks on their mixture. But this is just a side remark here on the talk page, there is no room for fully describing these samples in the article, as the aim is to keep things concise, and any further addition will bloat the presentation of the study. So in the article I will stop at the above minimal remark on the nature of the samples and where they are coming from, which is in line with the remarks that are made on the ancient Egyptian samples.

This concludes the edits that I will make. This presentation of the study gets everything across to the reader quickly and without repetition or loss of accuracy. Masrialltheway (talk) 14:34, 9 July 2022 (UTC)