Talk:Race of ancient Egyptians/Archive 2

message: Just to quote Mgreenbe: What's the fucking controversy? The african (black) origins of ancient egypt and the continued strong black element in dyanstic times can be verified by facio-cranial analysis and artistic representation. There's no argument there folks. It would be like denying gravity at this point. 
Peace unsigned comment 21:37, 18 January 2006 Teth22; please type ~~~~ to sign your comments
:Well, that's not an exact quote.  What I asked was, essentially, "who cares what race the ancient Egyptians were?"  If no one cared, this page wouldn't exist.  As for "denying gravity", I'm reluctant to state anything about ancient Egypt as fact unless it's widely accepted by egyptologists; perhaps still equivocally. --Mgreenbe 11:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:   Um, people...  

message: Q: What race or ethnic background were the ancient Egyptians? 
A: This is a very popular question, and unfortunately, there is no simple answer. However, it is an important one to address due to the racial divide the exists in many countries today, especially the United States. An ancient history professor once related the anecdote of how in one of his classes, a student wanted to know why Africa didn't have any civilizations in ancient times. When asked where he was when the class covered ancient Egypt, the student became visibly exasperated and said, "Yah... but they don't count!" His explanation for this statement was that the Egyptians were not negroes, and thus not really "African". 
In a way, the student was right. The ancient Egyptians were not "black". However, they were not "white" or any other so-called "race." This does not mean that they were not African though. A simple matter of geography forces them into that classification. Ancient Egypt was the most successful and longest lasting civilization on Earth, and it was African.
So how does one determine what "race" a people are? Sociologists and historians use various yardsticks to determine this, such as physical characteristics of the people, what language they spoke, or what religion they believed in, etc... 
Seated at the juncture of three continents, the Egyptians showed the physical characteristics of Caucasians, Negroes, and Asians. With the migration of various peoples into the Nile Valley throughout the thousands of years in which the Egyptian culture flourished, it is nearly impossible to avoid a racial mixture of the population. Therefore, the most heated debate centers around what race the Predynastic or earliest Egyptians were, the "original" Egyptians, if you will. Yet again, skeletal remains indicate that they shared the characteristics of Caucasians, Asians and Negroes.
Perhaps the most important question to answer is: What race did the Egyptians believe they belonged to? The ancient Egyptians saw themselves as being ethnically distinctive from both the Asiatics to the north and the Negros to the south. The tiles from a palace shown here depict a negro and an Asiatic captive. They look distinctly different from the Egyptian priest shown above. Both in art and in literature, it was clear that they saw themselves as being different from their neighbors. The Egyptians believed that they were of the "Egyptian" race.
Source: http://www.egyptianmyths.net/faq.htm
This is eurocentric humbuggery.  You can believe that the Egyptians were not black or negro, it would be within the breaches of reason to claim they were middle-eastern, but to claim that they were in the middle of three contients is laugh out loud.  We all know the ancient Egyptians certainly were not europeans to the slightest extent.  Besides the greek and roman invaders there are no european egyptians.  Europe is very far away from egypt which is right inbetween besides sudan and israel.  I've talked to many egyptians and they are divided on whether ancient egyptians were black or middle eastern but they all agreed that there were no europeans or whites (they don't consider middle eastern people white) in ancient egypt, which is true.  All the paintings of ancient egyptians had dark brown skin, not white skin.
Even your concept is filled with lies.  6000 years ago there was no concept of race. Unsigned
:That's incorrect. The notion that there was no concept of "race" before the europeans came around and used it is only partially accurate. The egyptians didn't have the same kind of notions about race as people did today, however they quite well understood that there were significant differences in appearence between themselves and the nubeans and the hill country dwellers. Thanatosimii 01:26, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What race or ethnic background were the ancient Egyptians? 

message: Is there a citation for the following?
:The ancient Puntites commonly were described as black peoples with "Negroid" features and elongated, or dolichocephalic, heads.
I don't dispute it, but I've never heard of descriptions of the people of PWNT (just that they are the peoples from whom Egyptians descended). I thought very little was known of them?
Yom 07:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Punt

message: Hey, deecevoice, I'm surprised to see that you're still in the game. (I thought you found wikipedia too "racist" and "systematically biased", hey if you're boyfriend's beating you why go back to him eh?) Anyways, do you think Brace's data should be removed, since it's already been refuted and exposed as a eurocentric fraud? Should I insert Keita's studies? (He's basically the only one among thousands that doesn't have any political or ideological levy to pull. 19th century trichological and craniometric studies, etc, ? What do you say? Get back to me ASAP. Peace out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Teth22 (talk • contribs) 19:17, 29 March 2006  (UTC)
:Who the hell are you?  And keep your insulting metaphors to yourself.  *x*  Deeceevoice 19:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please remember to be civil, deeceevoice and Teth22.  Justforasecond 19:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Making the routine stop kemosabe... 

message: Well, deecevoice, you're kind of petulant today, aren't you? Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Teth 22, and like yourself I'm an intelligent, justice-seeking brotha wishing to represent the history (i.e. Egypt) of blacks, and solely blacks, within africa in an unbiased, objective matter on this site, the holiest of grounds, wikipedia. Now are you going to answer my questions from the first post, or do you plan on making the changes yourself. Have any problems, e-mail me Bub. Peace out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Teth22 (talk • contribs) 21:15, 29 March 2006  (UTC)
:Teth22, please sign your edits with ~~~~ (four tildes, or shift+` four times). Adding this to the end of your post lets us know who said what so that nothing is confused. Alternatively, you can use ~~~ (three tildes) if you do not wish to include the date. Thank you. Yom 21:18, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allow me to... 

message: What's up with this line:" Britannica illustrates some elements of the cultural argument, pro and con" What con cultural arguments are there? Everything about Egyptian culuture screams "African" from Pharaonic kingship, mummification rituals, even cult worship of gods. It has no counterpart in Asia. Peace out. Teth22 13:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Zaph, pleas try to avoid an "us vs. them" mentality.  Justforasecond 05:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some Things I Need To Say...  

message: Although Cranial analysis bears little in determining the racial context or the visual association of Egyptians with any racial group, many Eurocentricists desire to elevate the significance of cranial analyses in determining how the Ancient Egyptians should be understood racially. Although many Black people, of whom Eurocentric scholars would ignore as Caucasoid, share these cranial characteristics, there is no movement within the scholarly community to reclassify black people as caucasoid. The racial context would then be lost and useless.
-----
Cranial analysis is the only reliable tool available to scientists that allows them to group human remains into the commonly defined racial groups and subgroups when no DNA samples are available. "Black people" are a political construct in the United States, the group historically being defined as anyone having "one drop" of Negroid blood, something that obviously makes little sense from the biological standpoint. This group of people is of mixed racial ancestry (mostly West African Negroid with a significant admixture of European Caucasoid and some Native American Mongoloid) and many of its members are indeed misclassified (or perhaps correctly classified) as white based on their cranial measurements. The same is true of Ethiopians (see the body of the article). And, by the way, there is no such thing as a Eurocentric (or an Afrocentric) scholar. There's but one science. Let's not confuse it with ideological bickering of white and black racists.
I deleted the ==Objectivity in the Afrocentric position== part of the article for the following reasons:
1. The article deals with the controversy, and should not take sides. Starting the article off with a sermon on the Afrocentric position is about as biased as an encyclopedia article can get.
2. It is redundant: the readers are already aware of the two sides of the controversy and are waiting for arguments and proofs. The opinion of Champollion is neither, and neither are UNSOURCED references to unnamed 19th century historians: all sciences have progressed far since then, Egyptology in particular.
3. The claim of the reconstruction of Tutankhamun being more 'Negroid' in appearance is pretty amusing, considering both the French and American teams pronounced him Caucasian, and the Egyptians had maintained it all along - to much controversy (already mentioned in the article).
4. Bemoaning the media bias has its place, but not in the article.
5. The article is already way too long.
:Actually, there's nothing wrong with the topic, though some with the content. The article should address the support for both sides without saying one is more likely than the other. Your #3 is actually incorrect. Zahi Hawass made the claim that the French team produced a "caucasoid" King Tut, but they actually said no such thing. Neither team has made any claim about his race as far as I'm aware (I may be wrong about the American team). #5 isn't that good of an argument. The article could be trimmed in some areas, but it generally doesn't go outside of the range of a good article length.
:Yom 05:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editorializing in the article 

message: Would someone please clean it up? There is nothing that suggests that the modern Egyptians aren't the direct descendants of the ancient ones. Furthermore, the Copts don't look Negroid at all.
--83.72.194.208 06:11, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page is heavily Afrocentrist 

message: instead of edit-warring pathetically obvious spin to statements, how about giving a clean outline of actual genetic studies? On what grounds is the reference to the Kivisild study removed? I have no problem with assuming that the AEians were pitch black, but I don't like to be bullshitted into this belief, and much of the arguments propounded here are pure kookery. I tried to clean up the "Linguistic arguments" section at least, which seems to contain no valid point whatsoever. Ancient Egyptian is an Afro-Asiatic language. This is compatible with a purely black society, but it is just as compatible with a Berber/Arabic-coloured or a mixed society. Nothing more can be deduced, live with it, and don't try to abuse linguistics for silly racialism. dab (ᛏ) 08:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I realize AE forms its own branch within AA. How is this "Eurocentric bullshit"? What are you even talking about? If you think the AA grouping is flawed, go and cite sources over at Afro-Asiatic, don't take it to some crackpot article in the backwaters of Wikipedia. AA is named AA because of Semitic; Proto-Semitic is usually assumed to have been spoken in Arabia, but even if it was spoken in the Horn of Africa, it spread to Arabia in the 3rd millennium at the latest. Beyond the superficial polemics about names, you seem to have no idea what you are talking about. dab (ᛏ) 17:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: spinning

message: You guys come in and vandalize the article in order to create an edit war to either lock the article or to get someone RFC'd. I know it, you know it, we all know it. The "vandalism" is nothing more than a propped up way to weaken the perception of legitimacy of the Afrocentric position. --Zaphnathpaaneah 16:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wish someone would take the trouble to describe a legitimate Afrocentrist position already. All "Afrocentrism" I have seen propounded on Wikipedia so far was pathetic drivel. I would be really grateful if someone could clean that out and show the actual merit in the 'movement' (or whatever it is), if any. Sadly, any -ism that has as its sole aim to push a preconceived notion is bound to be scientifically unsound. There may have been Eurocentric views in disconcertingly recent mainstream scholarship, but at least mainstream scholarship didn't baptize itself "Eurocentrism", and it benefitted from the scrapping of misconceptions. What is Afrocentrism minus its Afrocentrist misconceptions? Just mainstream scholarship all over again? dab (ᛏ) 17:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Everytime I make progress in clarifying the article. 

message: The Character of Ancient Egyptian society is what ultimately is the bottom line here. 
I do not know why people resort to empathizing irrelevant items such as
#Craniometry
#DNA variations
#linguistic arguments
Here is why. Firstly, common sense. Everyone, especially Eurocentricists want to argue that modern day conceptions of race should not be applied to ancient Egyptians. Ok fine. So STOP doing it. Don't tell me that some "caucasoid" looking skull is an indicator of the background or race of the Ancient Egyptians. That's a MODERN conception of race. INterpreting "skull shapes" to determine a "caucasian/white, black/negroid, or mixed" background is POINTLESS. That is because the PEOPLE of Egypt varied. 
Here is where the matter comes to a head. It is not normal for ANY group of people to be categorized by a "purity" standard. But only one group of people in the world are (well two if you count the Japanese). That is the "white". You cannot call everyone else west of China a "mixture" of white. Thats implying that everyone's ancestor was a Nordic blonde Norweigian type Caucasoid. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. People who are "not jet black" and who are in varying degrees in skin color, hair texture and facial morphology are not necessarily "ixed with Caucasoid/white proportionate to the similarity they have to an idealized pure white caucasoid"
Same thing for DNA. You can't theorize a "white/caucasoid" ancestor, because the original ancestors were not CAUCASOID! STOP STOP STOP trying to force the Egyptians, or anyone else in the "middle ground" to be the descendants of some fictional black/white ancestors. The Ancient Egyptians are simply a group of people whose features deviated (as everyone in the WORLD naturally would) from their original human ancestors. The original human ancestor (or at least the Egyptians ancestors) coming from Kenya/Uganda/Ethiopia looked UNQUESTIONABLY BLACK. 
Now their DNA may have differed, but again, like features, thats NORMAL! That does not make them "less black"... no in fact, its contradictory to acknowledge that Black people are the most genetically diverse, yet try to "weed out" those diversities which differ from some Eurocentric perception of "pure black". In essence, I am arguing against the Eurocentric notion of some white scientist choosing among the diverse Black groups, choosing one and saying "you, negro from wherever, you're the blackest so you are the litmus standard, and all of the rest of you are varying degress less black than him." That's what "mainstream" historians have done. They chose some black guy (fictional or otherwise) from Uganda, or Cameroun, or Congo, and decided he is the quintessentional pure black and everyone else is just a variation. 
It is THIS kind of underhanded "science" that is the CAUSE of the racial obsession that we are here discussing. Don't blame the Afrocentricists for being able to see through contradictions. Don't call us obsessed with race, or manipulative, or unable to be objective. 
It's not objective to just take a group of people out of their context and character, which is cultural, social, and diverse, then say "oh they aren't black". They are, they are because they exhibit the characteristics that make black people black. They are diverse, and INCLUSIVE of the darkest, widest nosed, kinky headed members. Egyptian society (prior to the 19th dynasty) did not exhibit "anti-black" sentiments (neither physical, cultural, or demographic). 
This "caucasoid" thing is silliness. The ethnographer, Coon, had categorized RWANDAN TUTSIS as Caucasoid. The term has lost its meaning and only is used to say in an underhanded way "not with any meaningful amounts of negroid heritage". BLACK people today have caucasoid skulls, that does not make 1/3 - 1/5th of the black race "caucasoid". It means simply that they have caucasoid skulls. They share nothing else in common with "white caucasoids". 
And in additon, underhanded tactics of "exemption" also must stop. Don't tell me that every "non caucasoid negroid" skull found in Egyptian archaeology is automatically a "non-Egyptian foreigner" while every "caucasoid skull" in egypt must be native. That's so annoying to hear that kind of arguing. 
When we talk about the Controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptians, we are not talking about the controversy over the skull shapes of Ancient Egyptians. 
.
::sheesh, you seem to be attacking 19th century windmills. I don't know why craniometry and cheesy philology are discussed here, I agree that that's completely irrelevant, unless we can show it was important to the history of the dispute (without being useful to answer the question of race itself). The question of genetic/racial/ethnic affiliation of the AEs is, however, still valid. It is not the same as asking after the "race" of the first human ancestor. Since the human latest universal ancestor predates later genetic separation, it is obviously pointless to discuss his "race" in contemporary terms. It is still valid to discuss the genetic makeup of Egyptians in 3500 BC. What was their mDNA makeup? Which modern population is most closely related to them? etc. There is no single "black race" in genetic terms. The major separations are L1, L2 and L3. L1 and L2 are "all black", while L3 includes some  "blacks" as well as everybody else. You can maybe define "Caucasoid" as mDNA H/W/X or whatever. It is completely artificial to define a "black race" by lumping L1, L2 and some selected parts of L3. [note: I realize that the above is a simplified discussion]. dab (ᛏ) 17:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is locked against anonymous & new users solely because of an unproductive edit war that kept other contributors -- including you -- from working on this article. If the people responsible calm down & show that they are able to debate their opinioins rationally, then this protection will be removed. -- llywrch 03:14, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help the contributors understand. 

message: "Today, one opinion among scholars is that ancient Egypt was a multi-racial society, consisting of Caucasoid, indigenous African (Negroid) and Asian (Mongoloid) peoples."
That is one FRINGE opinion among scholars not worthy of being put near the beginning of the article. MONGOLOID? Ok so somehow Chinese people (or whatever) came and settled in Egypt too. No. No linguistic, cultural, or ethnic links to Mongoloid societies. Saying Caucasoid isn't saying anything, since Caucasoid (as the neutral white contributors will attest) is not a racial term. Since you can have Black Caucasoids (and they not be desecendants of Indo-Europeans) thats useless. BUt I tip my hat off, you said "indigenous African" despite the fact I am convinced the writer probably wants "black" to not be included in that determination. That's what really is the issue here. Why are so many contributors so afraid of the word "black"? It's gonna getcha or something? Is it the idea of the glorious Ancient Egyptians having anything substantial in common with those pesky black people in America or Africa... is that so unsettling for you? That's really what this is about! --Zaphnathpaaneah 18:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the mongoloid thing was supposed to be in there. I was going to remove it, but I forgot. — Yom 18:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1st example of a red herring in this article 

message: "Yet other scholars claim that ancient Egyptians were predominantly Caucasoid, like the mostly Caucasoid modern Egyptians, according to some genetic studies.[1] [2] [3] [4]"
Firstly, it's underhanded to use DNA statistics on one side while ignoring it on the other. The FOURTH example points to Sub-Saharan as being the predominant contributor and it also says it clearly.
:The fourth example was added by me to show Dennv that only some studies say that modern Egyptians are Caucasoid. — Yom 18:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2nd misleading statement