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Comment by salimmadjd | Hacker News Reader

The article claims ancient Egyptians are more similar to people of Near East. "The study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did, whereas ancient Egyptians were found to be most closely related to ancient people from the Near East"

However, there is not enough sample data to make a universal assertion. What if Egyptian Pharos were a bit like European royalties, where the Austrian princess would marry the ruler of France or German royalty would marry the Russian Tzar. And these mummified people were prince or princes from Near East empires marrying into Egyptian royalty to forge political bonds?

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Hardly. These mummies are from 1400 BC ... there are no records of royal intermarriage until medieval ages.

"The ancient Egyptian royal families were almost expected to marry within the family, as inbreeding was present in virtually every dynasty. Pharaohs were not only wed to their brothers and sisters, but there were also "double-niece" marriages, where a man married a girl whose parents were his own brother and sister."

http://www.medicalbag.com/grey-matter/impact-of-royal-inbree...

Lastly, most mummies are not royal family members. Rulers were often buried with their servants. The article doesn't specify who exactly they analysed.

wow...unwise, and i wonder how they didn't notice?

Sorry, not clear. Didn't notice what?

You'd expect the Ptolemaic Pharaohs to be Greek/Turkish, I'd have thought. Not that this covers the whole time range examined.

No Turks in the region at that point in history. Turks are related to Mongols.

Most Turks are decended from the original people of Turkey - a bit like Hungary where it is very hard to find any central asian genetic contribution in the modern Hungarian population. Genes != culture.

Are you saying that modern Turks in Turkey are just Greeks that converted to Islam?

Well not Greeks (in the main), but Anatolians I guess. Certainly not Central Asian.

There's a whole Wikipedia article on this, interestingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Turkish_peo...

Although culturally Turks prefer the middle asia hun and monolian origin narrative, they are genetically mostly descendants of the anatolians who happened to live and breed there already for many millenia. Those people didn't suddenly disappear. This contrast between culture and genetics is confusing to many turks (me included)

That's what I think happened to other countries in the region as well. I'm from Iraq and speak Arabic but I don't think my ancestors are from the "Arabian peninsula", we just adopted the language. It also explains why "dialects" of Arabic can be so different.

Maybe Cretan/Hittite could be, but Greek/Turkish, I doubt.

I think the story is that the Ptolemaic Pharaohs were the descentants of Alexander the Great's generals. They created a Hellenistic (=Greek) kingdom in Egypt and the ruling elite most probably was of Greek origin.

The study found that ancient Egyptians were ... also closely related to Neolithic populations from the Anatolian Peninsula and Europe.

Ptolemaic dynasty came over 1000 years later than the mummies analyzed. 300 - 30 BC... Even then, Turkey was mostly Persia or Greece... Turks didn't exist yet.

Not all mummies were Pharos. All Egyptians regardless of class were mummified. The wealthy and powerful could afford a better job but it happened to everyone. So there is no reason to assume that the mummies being examined were royalty.

You're supposed to develop universal laws from data like that so that it's easier to hit negation over it.

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