Walk like an Egyptian....

[telemann.livejournal.com]

King Tutankhamun of Egypt: 1341 CE – 1323 CE
A forensic reconstruction of his face based on his skull

King Tut's remains were examined last year for any potential surviving DNA testing, in an effort to access his health and potential illnesses that could have lead to his death , as well as to link genetically a previously unidentified mummy as his mother. Despite the refusal of the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, to release any DNA results which might indicate the racial ancestry of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, the leaked results reveal that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes.



Tut's halotype is R1b: R1b is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Europe reaching its highest concentrations in Ireland, Scotland, western England and the European Atlantic seaboard.



The DNA test settles a long and boisterous debate between Egyptologists and radical Afrocentrists (e.g. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena and Mary Lefkowitz, author of Not Out of Africa). A theme in some of the more radical Afrocentrists is an "alleged denial by Western academia of the African and (western) Asiatic influence on ancient Egyptian and Greek culture." It was against this controversy that Dr. Hawass made his decision.

Some of this genetic research can be extremely controversial (e.g. some results in the Balkans have been a bit upsetting to Macedonians). Despite whatever legends arose about who settled what area, you can't argue with the science, that's the beauty of all this work. And it's having huge scientific implications for other fields, including computer science, medicine, and even mathematics.

But the real irony is that in a real sense, the Afrocentrists are ultimately right: we are all African. Dr. Spencer Wells and the National Geographic have been doing extensive research on the migration of humans, using genetic markers and gathering as many samples as possible to fill in our gaps of knowledge of the routes humanity took in its journey across the globe. In a very real sense, we are all related to one another, and this means Justin Bieber too! ;)


The National Geographic has an interactive map showing the human journey here.

You can see Dr. Wells from an interview a few years ago explaining all of this to Today Show hosts, and giving them details about their own ancestor's migrations.

You can participate in the National Geographic project by purchasing a kit for about 99.00 USD. Google co-founder Sergey Brin's wife started 23 and Me, a genetic testing service that can give you a personalized report on your ancestor's migration, but also gives you a complete results of genetic markers for diseases that have been identified (Sergey Brin discovered he has the markers for Parkinson's). As new discoveries are made, clients are given updated research.

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I don't get why people get so hung up on genetics. Culture is primarily determined and bounded by language, not genes.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

^What he said.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[lai-choi-san.livejournal.com]

Let's assume that Tut knew nothing about his ancestors. Nonetheless, his DNA remains very interesting from an archeological point of view. Culture and migration are not unrelated to each other.

Hey I'm R1b too!

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you why I am a member of the National Geographic genome project: to find out who my biological father is.

When I signed up for the Family Tree genome project in conjunction with NGGP I joined the Day family project, only to be informed I was not genetically linked to the Day surname genome.

Instead, I found out I am from the English Stanley line out of York.

I'll give you another reason people get 'hung up' on genetics: it disproves the Creation timeline in the Bible, and shows that indeed we all descended from tribes along the Southern Coast of South Africa.

Peace out, cousin.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I love the new development which DNA research has brought to deep history. We've been spoonfed some preposterous ideas like our proto-Turkic ancestry, which is now being crushed to tiny bits as more evidence pops up that we're more related to the Indo-European group, and besides the indigenous (Thracian) element in the initial amalgamation of our nation had actually been much more significant than long thought. The dominant belief for a long time was that some Turkic nomads came in small numbers across the Danube and ignited the vast sea of Slavs and the tiny remaining Thracian traces to mold them into a nation, which then formed through the Golden Age of the First and Second Bulgarian empires. Now turns out those weren't Turkic tribes but ultimately originated from Pamir/Afgnaistan (therefore were rather Persian), they weren't exactly nomads but built huge walled cities and had lasting state tradition which came into contact with Hittites, Assyrians and Egyptians, and in fact the proto-Bulgar and Thracian elements could've been much larger, actually something like 1/3 : 1/3: 1/3 along with the Slavs. Of course more research will be needed but some really curious discoveries are being made these days, and if we add the multiple toponymic discoveries scattered throughout the whole Mideastern region (Balhash, Balkhara, Bolhar etc etc) the picture now looks much more complete.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been seeing some of the reaction to the Bulgarian results, and I thought immediately of you and wondered what your take was on this. Very cool comment too ;)

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

At the risk of derailing a very well-researched post, I kind of love that this is the first version of Tut that I've ever seen where everything about his facial expression screams SRSLY U GUISE, SRSLY.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

And the shape of his skull fascinates me.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Hehe ;)

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Looks like he was a handsome lad.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Steve Martin is vindicated.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

HA, totally ;)

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Only if this dude went gray at the age of 20.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Seriously though, I'm glad this smashes a lot of the claims made by radical afro-centrists. Back in my college days I used to argue with a couple that were outraged that the truth of the Pharaoh's true ethnicity was hidden by the US Gov't, the Catholic Church, and the NYPD. It's a post-hoc bit of glee I can enjoy.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this story sort of fits in with the conspiracy threads that been discussed lately. On another note: I only learned last week that Dr. Hawass lost his position, and has been sentenced to jail for a year over a land swindle thingey. I watched the Discovery Channel's "reality" show featuring him and a team of interns earlier this year, and to say he has a rather nasty temper, is putting it lightly. Not a pleasant chap. But the series was fascinating, and they had two major big finds (one was the discovery of a huge statue for Queen Cleopatra's mausoleum in Alexandria's inner harbor).

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Ah, but which dynasty?

Just as two Roman emperors were black, at least three dynasties in Egypt were what would be termed African. Just because Tut wasn't on his Y chromosome side doesn't mean there wasn't evidence of such on his mitochondrial side, or that other dynasties weren't African.

Egypt is interesting. For example, the Ptolomies were all of Greek origin, and a few branches of the family are still extant: one lives in Rome.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I find it ironic that that particular conspiracy theory is like the inverted version of the belief that the Indo-Iranians (y'know, Jawarhahal Nehru and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) were at one point blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. It's like that type of alien that looks like blond, blue-eyed people from Outer Space favored by some UFOlogists. The level of stupidity people are willing to sink to is sometimes quite amusing....

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Justin Bieber is an alien.

Also:

you can't argue with the science

I know a certain group of people who can.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Scientists? Arguing with the science is pretty much what science is all about :P

[lai-choi-san.livejournal.com]

So there would be a probability that Tut is a descendant of Neolithic migrants ? Perhaps the same migrants who spread the megalithic religion along the Atlantic coast and into the Mediterranean ?

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Now if we could only get Jesus' DNA so the various "Jesus was [insert ethnic group here]!" types would shut up. :P

But seriously, I like this. It just proves that modern nationalism has even less of a rational basis than before.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Well, if we could get His DNA it really wouldn't matter would it? :D

Showing my ignorance

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

"you can't argue with the science"

Probably that doesn't mean what I think it means.....I thought that is what the scientific method was.

Did you mean you can't argue with the specific method used, because it is absolutely 100% never fail accurate?

Re: Showing my ignorance

[telemann.livejournal.com]

You are a creationist, right? I mean, some of the spin-off of this work really doesn't support any notion of creationism in the strict sense of the word: not if you take the Bible literally at face value for time lines or science.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

But the real irony is that in a real sense, the Afrocentrists are ultimately right: we are all African.

I thought we knew that already? Was there really a 'long and boisterous' debate as to the origins of humans before this?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually there was a long and vigorous debate. In the scientific community the multi-regional view had a long-standing acceptance, and Darwin's view of an African origin was rejected. The mentality of the Colonial era went a long way to explaining why it was so hard for European scientists to accept what the evidence showed.

The application of DNA to palaeoanthropology backed up the discoveries that the oldest apemen were from Africa, not Asia or Africa, Asia, and Europe simultaneously.