Ancient DNA Proves the Egyptians Aren't Who We Thought | DNA Documentary

In 2017, researchers recovered whole genomes from Egyptian mummies for the first time — and the ancestry didn't match the story either side of the old argument had been telling. The people in the painted coffins were genetically closest to the ancient Near East. The real surprise was about living Egyptians. Across roughly 1,300 years — Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman rule — their genetic profile stayed remarkably stable; the conquerors ruled, but on this evidence they didn't rewrite the population. The change most people argue about came later: the larger sub-Saharan African ancestry in modern Egyptians arrived mostly after the Roman period. The finding comes from Verena Schuenemann, Johannes Krause and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute and the University of Tübingen, in Nature Communications (2017) — ninety maternal genomes and three nuclear genomes from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The authors are careful: three genomes from one site cannot speak for all of ancient Egypt. Egypt was never a sealed vault — it was a crossroads. Discover why "what race were the ancient Egyptians" is the wrong question — and what the DNA records instead. RELATED EPISODES The Bajau sea nomads whose bodies adapted to life underwater North and South Han Chinese: one people, two genetic stories Koreans and Japanese: closer than either side admits Subscribe for sourced, cinematic ancestry documentaries weekly. SOURCES CITED Schuenemann, V. J., et al. (2017). Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods. Nature Communications, 8:15694.