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It's worth noting though that Arabs are not native to North Africa, so ancient Egyptians wouldn't necessarily look like many people today. They colonized the Ma
by povertyworld 8y ago
It's worth noting though that Arabs are not native to North Africa, so ancient Egyptians wouldn't necessarily look like many people today. They colonized the Maghreb around the 7th century. The indigenous people of that region are the Amazigh in the west and Copts in Egypt. Egypt today also has very light skinned people descended from European slaves the Turks brought in to aid their military.
- Geimfari 8y agoGenetic testing on ancient Egyptian mummies showed they were most similar to modern day Arabs. Sub-Saharan African genes made up 6-15%, which is much lower than today's Egyptians. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controve...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- povertyworld 8y agoInteresting. I had mostly thought about the region in terms of language groups probably due to coming from a history background, which relies on written sources, rather than anthropology or archaeology. Looking at the sources for that wiki article, this appears to be one of the largest and most recent DNA studies on ancient Egyptian remains: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694. Edit: To stay on topic, my textbook in a two semester art history survey ("Janson's") said that the defacement of Egyptian statues was due to religious iconoclasm without further specifics. I'm going to accept this as the mainstream academic consensus in the early 21st century. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this matches the general thesis of the parent article.