Claiming Egypt

Historians trying to fluff up African influence on Classical Mediterranean civilisations, and thus on Western Civ in general, have asserted for years that Ancient Egyptians were black and their accomplishments based on Nubian and sub-Saharan knowledge.  This is still widely accepted in some academic circles, and was even the subject of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year. Heather MacDonald at City Journal was not impressed.

Europeans, or at least the British tabloid the Independent, also like the idea that they are more rightfully descended from the Ancient Egyptians than even the modern Egyptians are. "Ancient Egyptians more closely related to Europeans than modern Egyptians, scientists claim." The paper the breathless headline was based on seems to be actually pretty good, but says just about the opposite.

The quick summary is No and No. Over at Unsupervised learning, Razib goes into the recent genetic evidence, which supports neither proposition in the least. The closest group to ancient Egyptians genetically is (wait for it) modern Egyptians. As many other places in the world show significant population replacement, that level of stability is actually unusual.  The myth of closeness to modern European blood comes from the addition of sub-Saharan genesto Egypt  since ancient times, most likely from the constant stream of slaves brought in over the last millennium, and slave/soldiers from West Asia as well. Modern Egyptians have at least 20% sub-Saharan admixture on average and a little more West Asian, where the ancient Egyptians had "none" and "little". Therefore, the reasoning goes, because the Europeans also have very little, they must be more closely related to those old advanced civilisations than the current inhabitants. There are a few problems with the reasoning, but the simplest form is "they were related to the older Europeans who are mostly gone from the genetic record now." To paraphrase Wally from Dilbert, "Those were other Europeans." The inland Sardinians are about the only remnants of those.  Probably the Basques as well.

And from that paragraph you can see how they couldn't have been black, either. They are themselves.