Tuesday, May 30, 2017
The first ever full-genome analysis of Ancient Egyptians shows that they were more Turkish and European than African
Scientists analyzed ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies dating from 1400 BC to 400 AD and discovered that they shared genes with people from the Mediterranean. They found that ancient Egyptians were closely related to ancient populations in the Levant - now modern day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. They were also genetically similar to Neolithic populations from the Anatolian Peninsula and Europe. The study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did. The data shows that modern Egyptians share approximately 8% more ancestry on the nuclear level with Sub-Saharan African populations than with ancient Egyptians. In the last 1,500 years, Egypt became more genetically African, whereas the ancient Egyptians showed almost no sub-Saharan African ancestry and had a high affinity to ancient Near Eastern and European populations.