Martin L Hedington
Why is it they only ever find Ancient Mummy's, how come it's never a Daddy?
Bruce H. Anderson
Martin, that's because the researchers are heavily influenced by the British. Had the researchers been from the good ol' USA they would have found missies and bubbas.
LindsayDecker
The Turkish connection makes one think of Gobekli Tepe with it's large hewn stella and very Egyptian-looking bas relief carvings. Same roots?
Vincent Singleton
Aside from saying that the sample consisted of 151 mummies, did they give any clue to if they mummies belonged to a family, or unrelated? It would be the same if 3,000 years from now we found 151 bodies in one part of a city and tried to compare the results to the whole city.
woz
Vincent: "the samples dated from 1400 BCE to 400 CE". Strictly speaking that doesn't preclude one family - but do you know where your ancestors were 1000 years ago?
ChrisWalker
of course Alexander the Great could have invaded Farther Back in the timeline then is currently accepted. Have you looked at the timeline of the rise and fall of so many empires from 1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D.? its not like the people moved around a lot, the death rate at birth was how high? recovery from war if able bodied men doesnt seem to fit with the amount of men needed to build all these cities and empires in 2000 years. you need x amount if men to build x amount if cities using antiquated and SLOW and labor intensive rock quarring techniques while at the same time x amount of men are constently at war? and traveling long distences on foot and horseback? birthrate doesnt add up to the timeline of empires from 1000 b.c to 1000 a.d.
Sean Anderton
So the ancient Egyptians already had Neolithic European DNA before Alexander got there, so there was "no major shift in the DNA of Egyptian Royals?" Just reading between the lines... hmmm...
Pequod42
No doubt these finds are valid for the population examined. On the other hand, it is worth noting that examination of rulers' DNA would surely show a major shift. That's because ALexander's generals divided up his empire after his death in 323 BC. After that time the rulers of Egypt were descendents of one of those leaders, Ptolemy. Cleopatra, who lived some 300 years after Alexander's death, was a descendant of Ptolemy, as was her brother.
Max Cobia
There was slavery that didn't involve white people? Is this really true?
Stickmaker
Just remember, the empire of Ancient Egypt was around for longer than it's been gone.
Maybe we're just in an unusually long interdynastic period. :-)