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Comment by dismalaf | Hacker News Reader

Gonna need a source for your assertion since the Egyptians and Minoans always differentiated between themselves and Nubians/Libyans in art and literature...

People from the ancient near East nearly always depicted themselves as somewhere between white and reddish/light brown and their modern populations fall within the same spectrum.

There's no evidence for near Eastern populations having ever looked "Sub Saharan".

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Bob Brier’s “The Great Courses” lecture series on ancient Egypt. Nubians were painted dark and Libyans were always shown with a feather in their headgear and blue eyes.

So your source literally corroborates what I'm saying, not that Near East populations appeared Sub Saharan in complexion. Gotcha.

I never said that everyone in the Ancient Near East or the Mediterranean basin had a Sub-Saharan look, only that there were enough such people to be notable and that they were genuinely an integral part of those ancient societies, with quite high-status or even elite roles at times.

I suppose we do not know what she looked like, but Moses had a Kushite wife and was criticized for it. "Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman." (Numbers 12:1 ESV)

It seems that no evidence is a bit of hyperbole.

There's evidence that Nubians/Kushites had plenty of contact with Egypt and some lived there, but again, they're referred to as distinct from Egyptians, Mesopotamians, etc...

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