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Comment by ralfd | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the linked article by parent poster? There could be maybe made an argument that Copts are the descendants of ancient Egyptians:

https://mobile.twitter.com/bewilderedcopt/status/10817763566...

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All the linked article showed is that they gained 8% sub-saharan ancestry. That's not much of a shift.

I've seen a lot of ethnonationalist rhetoric online by middle eastern christian groups stating that they are the true heirs to the region, and that this is justifiable by genetics. I would take such claims with a large wheelbarrow of salt.

Looking further up that thread, someone else said:

>And BTW the Coptic Christians in Egypt are the REAL Egyptians not Arab invaders.

It seems to be the scientific consensus. I personally don't think genetics carry any hereditary claim to a thousand years old culture but it always bothers me to see people go against state of the art scientific conclusions (unless they have good evidence of their own).

>Copts share the same main ancestral component than North African and Middle East populations (dark blue), supporting a common origin with Egypt (or other North African/Middle Eastern populations). They are known to be the most ancient population of Egypt and at k = 4 (Fig.3), they show their own component (dark green) different from the current Egyptian population which is closer to the Arabic population of Qatar.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4446898/

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