http://www.archaeology.org/news/5589-17 ... -mummy-dnaArchaeology Today wrote: an international team of scientists has analyzed ancient Egyptian nuclear DNA obtained from mummies interred at the archaeological site of Abusir el-Meleq, located in Middle Egypt.... Reliable samples were obtained from 90 individuals, and the entire nuclear genomes of three individuals were mapped. The results suggest that the ancient Egyptians were related to ancient populations in the Near East, and Neolithic populations from Anatolia and Europe. And, when compared with the genomes of modern Egyptian populations, the data suggests there has been an increase in Sub-Saharan African gene flow into Egypt over the past 1,500 years, according to Stephan Schiffels of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
I remember once upon a time a girl asked me----
"Did you know that Cleopatra was black?"
Being that the girl herself was black, I wanted to be a little extra careful--and a little more than my usual pedantic self----
"Cleopatra VII?"
"No, THE Cleopatra!"
"There were quite a few..."
"The famous one--the Egyptian one--was really black."
I explained at length that THE Cleopatra was named after Alexander THE Great's sister; that she was of the Ptolemaic dynasty (pointing out the silent P thing for which the Greeks are famous and that she was an incestuously direct descendant of one of Alexander's favorite generals--Ptolemy.) which ruled Egypt from the late fourth to the first century BC.
"Nope," she insisted, "just look at a picture of her!"
