Post by Noah on Sept 9, 2011 23:10:04 GMT -5
I wasn't sure whether or not the material below qualifies as an example of anti-Hamitism. It's more likely just an example of really poor translation skills. However, the net result is the same i.e. misrepresentation of Hamitic people. It also inadvertently touches on several important topics, so I thought I'd give it its own thread.
The material in question involves the following sentence, a quote that is often bandied about on online forums (usually for Afrocentric purposes):
The quote was professionally translated into English from French. The original passage that it supposedly translates was featured in a French language study from 1992 titled Origines du peuplement de l'Egypte ancienne : L'apport de l'anthropobiologie, a paper that was prepared by the scholar Alain Froment. Froment is a world-renowned authority on African anthropology, having been a former colleague of Jean Hiernaux (some of whose theories he also debunked in later papers) and one of the main consultants on Sarah Tishkoff's influential 2009 genetic study on African populations.
However, the quote in question is a gross mistranslation of what Froment actually writes. The original passage reads as follows in French, presented here in its full context for clarification:
Through multi-variate craniometric analysis of 384 global populations, including Egyptians, Froment basically concludes that Egyptians are a heterogeneous population. In the bold phrases above, he roughly indicates that the analysis shows that:
*"the Egyptian population evinces great variability, which is consistent with the general opinion on polymorphism and geographical gradients with regard to cranial form."
*"the populations of Lower Egypt are very close to those of the Maghreb, and those of Upper Egypt resemble those of Nubia, the latter of which are adjacent, but not identical, to those of Sub-Saharan Africa"
*"generally, the physique of Ancient Egyptians is exactly equidistant from that of Europeans and from that of Negro-Africans"
*"certain populations from the Mediterranean, on the one hand, and from the Horn of Africa (Tigre, Somali) on the other, fall within the range of variation of Ancient Egyptians."
*"pretending that the Pharaonic Egyptians were all "Blacks", or "Whites", suggests fantasy or manipulation"
As such, Froment is using a clinal approach to indicate that the Egyptians were morphologically an intermediate population between Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans, but also distinct from both. Their natural range of variability extended from more standard Mediterranean types to gracile Horner physiques, but not to the Northwestern European ("white") or Negroid ("black") extremes -- classifications which he suggests are the realm of "fantasy" or "manipulation".
In fact, in another study of his, Froment indicates that there are several such naturally intermediate populations. That is, morphologically intermediate populations that did not evolve that way due to admixture between Northwestern Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. Among the former populations Froment includes most Middle Easterners, Nubians, South Asians, Horners and North Africans. He also suggests that these morphologically intermediate groups are all related to one another since a significant proportion of their respective ancestries traces back to the same Proto-Mediterranean ancestral population.
This is remarkably similar to the pioneering Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi's postulation almost a full century earlier of a distinct Mediterranean people:
If one examines the autosomal DNA affinities of the various Proto-Mediterranean-descended populations, we indeed see a common West Eurasian component tying them all together; obviously no Sub-Saharan component does. And that shared West Eurasian component is precisely the Proto-Mediterranean element that Sergi, Froment, and many other scholars have observed and spoken about over the years. In the ADMIXTURE analysis plot below taken from Behar et al. (2010), that component roughly corresponds with the light blue one that first appears at K=5 (the fifth column from the left).
As can be seen, that light blue Proto-Mediterranean component makes up most of the West Eurasian ancestry in Palestinians and other Near Eastern populations.
This is consistent with the following famous assertion by Carlton Coon on what is, in his professional opinion, the region that today harbors the highest proportion of individuals that most closely correspond to the original Mediterranean type (a physical type which he, like most authorities, associates with the ancient Egyptians):
As explained further in the Near Eastern origin of the Paleo-Hamites & Capsian thread, the Paleo-Hamites are believed to have entered Africa from the Fertile Crescent or thereabouts (including Palestine) by way of a land-bridge connecting Arabia to the Horn region. Their influence can also indeed be seen as far away as South Asia, where similar skeletal remains and associated stone industries have been found.
The presence of the widely-distributed Mediterranean component as the dominant ancestral element in the Hamitic peoples in North & Northeast Africa, as evident in the ADMIXTURE analysis plot above, thus only reinforces the suggested Near Eastern origins of the Paleo-Hamites. At a higher genetic level (K=3), we can also see in the graphic that that component is a generic Caucasoid/West Eurasian one (standard blue) from which it later evolved. The Mediterranean element is therefore really a Caucasoid sub-division as opposed to a race unto itself.
The material in question involves the following sentence, a quote that is often bandied about on online forums (usually for Afrocentric purposes):
"Black populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into Egyptian variations."
The quote was professionally translated into English from French. The original passage that it supposedly translates was featured in a French language study from 1992 titled Origines du peuplement de l'Egypte ancienne : L'apport de l'anthropobiologie, a paper that was prepared by the scholar Alain Froment. Froment is a world-renowned authority on African anthropology, having been a former colleague of Jean Hiernaux (some of whose theories he also debunked in later papers) and one of the main consultants on Sarah Tishkoff's influential 2009 genetic study on African populations.
However, the quote in question is a gross mistranslation of what Froment actually writes. The original passage reads as follows in French, presented here in its full context for clarification:
"Bien que l'abondance des restes humains en Egypte privilégie l'anthropologie physique pour aborder la question de l'origine de son peuplement, l'intérêt pour la craniologie a beaucoup diminué, dans le même temps où des méthodes d'analyse statistique élaborées, mais facilement démocratisées par la micro-informatique, se développaient, de sorte qu'il n'y a pas eu de synthèse récente sur l'anatomie des Egyptiens, comparée à l'ensemble des populations mondiales. Après avoir souligné les implications idéologiques qu'entraînent de telles recherches, et passé en revue les différentes approches possibles, notamment l'étude des peintures et des sculptures, et les analyses biologiques des momies, une analyse craniométrique multivariée, portant sur 384 populations mondiales, est présentée. Elle montre que la population égyptienne présentait une grande variabilité, et confirme l'opinion générale sur le polymorphisme et le gradient géographique concernant la forme du crâne : les populations de Basse-Egypte sont très proches de celles du Maghreb, et celles de Haute-Egypte ressemblent à celles de Nubie, ces dernières étant voisines, mais non identiques, à celles d'Afrique sub-saharienne. Il n'y a cependant aucune rupture entre toutes ces populations, mais différenciation progressive, et globalement, le physique des Egyptiens Anciens est exactement à équidistance de celui des Européens et de celui des négro-africains; certaines populations de la Méditerranée d'une part, de la Corne de l'Afrique (Tigré, Somalie) de l'autre, tombent à l'intérieur de la gamme de variation des Egyptiens Anciens. Cette méthode d'approche de la variabilité humaine est « clinale » et non « raciale » : elle n'est basée sur aucune typologie et permet d'interpréter les variations anatomiques en termes de biologie génétique et d'adaptabilité au milieu. Dans ce contexte, prétendre que les Egyptiens pharaoniques étaient tous des « Noirs », ou des « Blancs », relève de la fantaisie ou de la manipulation."
Through multi-variate craniometric analysis of 384 global populations, including Egyptians, Froment basically concludes that Egyptians are a heterogeneous population. In the bold phrases above, he roughly indicates that the analysis shows that:
*"the Egyptian population evinces great variability, which is consistent with the general opinion on polymorphism and geographical gradients with regard to cranial form."
*"the populations of Lower Egypt are very close to those of the Maghreb, and those of Upper Egypt resemble those of Nubia, the latter of which are adjacent, but not identical, to those of Sub-Saharan Africa"
*"generally, the physique of Ancient Egyptians is exactly equidistant from that of Europeans and from that of Negro-Africans"
*"certain populations from the Mediterranean, on the one hand, and from the Horn of Africa (Tigre, Somali) on the other, fall within the range of variation of Ancient Egyptians."
*"pretending that the Pharaonic Egyptians were all "Blacks", or "Whites", suggests fantasy or manipulation"
As such, Froment is using a clinal approach to indicate that the Egyptians were morphologically an intermediate population between Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans, but also distinct from both. Their natural range of variability extended from more standard Mediterranean types to gracile Horner physiques, but not to the Northwestern European ("white") or Negroid ("black") extremes -- classifications which he suggests are the realm of "fantasy" or "manipulation".
In fact, in another study of his, Froment indicates that there are several such naturally intermediate populations. That is, morphologically intermediate populations that did not evolve that way due to admixture between Northwestern Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. Among the former populations Froment includes most Middle Easterners, Nubians, South Asians, Horners and North Africans. He also suggests that these morphologically intermediate groups are all related to one another since a significant proportion of their respective ancestries traces back to the same Proto-Mediterranean ancestral population.
This is remarkably similar to the pioneering Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi's postulation almost a full century earlier of a distinct Mediterranean people:
"Now, to come to the Mediterranean stock, I must make the same distinction of physical characters, that is to say, external, internal, and intermediate. As I have already described it elsewhere, this stock in its external characters is a brown human variety, neither white nor negroid, but pure in its elements, that is to say not a product of the mixture of Whites with Negroes or negroid peoples."
books.google.ca/books?id=N_oogvw8x9MC&pg=PA250#v=onepage&q&f=false
If one examines the autosomal DNA affinities of the various Proto-Mediterranean-descended populations, we indeed see a common West Eurasian component tying them all together; obviously no Sub-Saharan component does. And that shared West Eurasian component is precisely the Proto-Mediterranean element that Sergi, Froment, and many other scholars have observed and spoken about over the years. In the ADMIXTURE analysis plot below taken from Behar et al. (2010), that component roughly corresponds with the light blue one that first appears at K=5 (the fifth column from the left).
As can be seen, that light blue Proto-Mediterranean component makes up most of the West Eurasian ancestry in Palestinians and other Near Eastern populations.
This is consistent with the following famous assertion by Carlton Coon on what is, in his professional opinion, the region that today harbors the highest proportion of individuals that most closely correspond to the original Mediterranean type (a physical type which he, like most authorities, associates with the ancient Egyptians):
"The Mediterranean racial zone stretches unbroken from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence eastward to India. A branch of it extends far southward on both sides of the Red Sea into southern Arabia, the Ethiopian highlands, and the Horn of Africa. Of the three main Mediterranean sub-races which this zone contains, the most widespread, the most central, the most highly evolved, and most characteristically Mediterranean is the central Mediterranean form, as best exemplified skeletally by the pre-dynastic Egyptians. Today the largest unified area in which this moderate-sized, intermediate Mediterranean racial type is found in greatest purity is the Arabian Peninsula."
www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-XI2.htm
As explained further in the Near Eastern origin of the Paleo-Hamites & Capsian thread, the Paleo-Hamites are believed to have entered Africa from the Fertile Crescent or thereabouts (including Palestine) by way of a land-bridge connecting Arabia to the Horn region. Their influence can also indeed be seen as far away as South Asia, where similar skeletal remains and associated stone industries have been found.
The presence of the widely-distributed Mediterranean component as the dominant ancestral element in the Hamitic peoples in North & Northeast Africa, as evident in the ADMIXTURE analysis plot above, thus only reinforces the suggested Near Eastern origins of the Paleo-Hamites. At a higher genetic level (K=3), we can also see in the graphic that that component is a generic Caucasoid/West Eurasian one (standard blue) from which it later evolved. The Mediterranean element is therefore really a Caucasoid sub-division as opposed to a race unto itself.