DNA Proves: Egyptians Too Once Wandered The Desert
For the first time ever, scientists have extracted DNA from mummies to uncover the origins of ancient Egyptians. The genetic track leads to Europe, bearing witness of the introduction of sophisticated farming from far away.
Soda and caustic embalming materials, hot desert air, and suffocating atmospheric humidity break down the genetic material of mummies incredibly efficiently. And the little DNA which is left is often contaminated by excavators and scientists. So, modern DNA researchers could not be sure whose genes they were studying, but now a team of German scientists have done the impossible, securing small quantities of DNA from 93 mummies and comparing it to DNA from modern and earlier peoples from the countries around Egypt. The discovery allows us unprecedented insight into the origins of Egyptians and their turbulent history, which involves different invasions by Assyrians, Persians, Greek, and Romans. Results already show that the Nile people cold-shouldered the external conquerors – and that they were more closely related to Asians and Europeans than to other African peoples.
SCIENTISTS STUDIED 2 TYPES OF DNA
Professor Johannes Krause, who is the head of the Max Planck Institute’s Department for Archaeogenetics in Jena, Germany, used a collection of 151 mummy heads as his starting point. The material is all from the Abusir elMeleq community near the Nile and covers a
historical period of 1,300 years, from about 950 BC to 350 AD.
In the first place, the scientists focused on DNA from the tiny power plants of cells: mitochondria. That is the DNA which scientists normally use for relationship analyses, and it involves the advantage that there is often more of it than of the genetic material itself – the genome – in the cell nucleus. But as mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother, it gives no clues of the relation-ship on the father’s side. Hence, the scientists also chose to try to extract the mummies’ core DNA, which is inherited from both parents and contains much more family tree data.
NEW METHOD REVEALED ANCIENT DNA
When the scientists had obtained tooth and bone specimens from the mummies, they were about to begin "spring cleaning", which was to rid them of polluting DNA not only from bacteria, but also from humans, who have been in touch with the mummies in recent history. There is only so little ancient DNA left in a mummy tooth, etc., that it can easily "drown" in all the modern DNA from archaeologist fingerprints, etc.
Nobody had ever met this challenge, but Johannes Krause and his colleagues took advantage of the fact that mummy DNA is ancient and consequently broken down. Previous studies have shown that very characteristic chemical changes take place in DNA, when it is slowly broken down over the centuries. The changes leave the ancient DNA with a special pattern, which is clearly different from modern contamination sources. So, the scientists could identify and extract the mummy DNA instead of the contaminated, modern DNA.
From three mummies, the scientists secured the complete hereditary material from a cell nucleus, while 90 other mummies contributed all mitochondrial DNA.
SLAVES MADE EGYPT AFRICAN
The large quantity of extracted DNA revealed that the ancient Egyptians originated from the western part of the Middle East and even from Europe. The closest relationship was with Stone Age people from what is now Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, but there was also genetic resemblance with European Stone Age people from as far away as Northern Italy. Moreover, the DNA samples showed that the Egyptians almost did not mix blood with invaders. Instead, they maintained a rather homogenous genetic profile until about 350 AD.
Only then, peoples from Southern Africa began to gain ground in Egypt, and genes were mixed. Scientists can see this, because modern Egyptians share more genes with sub-Saharan Africans than their ancestors. The immigration was probably the result of increased trade on the Nile, including slavery, and the spread of Islam, which established closer links between the peoples of Northern Africa and subSaharan Africans in the Middle Ages.
However, some scientists warn against including all of Egypt in the results of the study. The DNA studied comes from a limited area in Northern Egypt, and theoretically, it could be from a people with a unique genealogy. That will soon be clear.
The new efficient method of removing modern pollution sources from mummy DNA paves the way for numerous new analyses that can shed more light on the origin of the Egyptians. And the way is literally paved with mummies. So far, at least 1,700 have been discovered in Egypt, and experts estimate that up to 1 million could exist.