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DNA sheds light on Minoans Crete’s fabled Minoan civilization was built by people from Anatolia, according to a new study by Greek and foreign scientists that disputes an earlier theory that said the Minoans’ forefathers had come from Africa. The new study – a collaboration by experts in Greece, the USA, Canada, Russia and Turkey – drew its conclusions from the DNA analysis of 193 men from Crete and another 171 from former neolithic colonies in central and northern Greece. The results show that the country’s neolithic population came to Greece by sea from Anatolia – modern-day Iran, Iraq and...

DNA analysis has debunked the longstanding theory that the Minoans, who some 5,000 years ago established Europe's first advanced Bronze Age culture, were from Africa. The Minoan civilisation arose on the Mediterranean island of Crete in approximately the 27th century BC and flourished for 12 centuries until the 15th century BC. But the culture was lost until British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed its remains on Crete in 1900, where he found vestiges of a civilisation he believed was formed by refugees from northern Egypt. Modern archaeologists have cast doubt on that version of events, and now DNA tests of...

When the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos on Crete in 1900, he saw the vestiges of a long-lost civilization whose artefacts set it apart from later Bronze-Age Greeks. The Minoans, as Evans named them, were refugees from Northern Egypt who had been expelled by invaders from the South about 5,000 years ago, he claimed. Modern archaeologists have questioned that version of events, and now ancient DNA recovered from Cretan caves suggests that the Minoan civilization emerged from the early farmers who settled the island thousands of years earlier....

Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour. "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters. "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency. Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory. Protestors also...

A new study concludes that modern humans arrived in Europe much earlier than previously believed, and clarifies more specifically the long time period they overlapped with Neanderthals. The significant overlap bolsters a theory that the two species met, bred and possibly exchanged or copied vital toolmaking techniques. It represents another twist in an enduring puzzle about human origins: why we triumphed while the better adapted and similarly intelligent Neanderthals died out. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Neanderthals are our closest known extinct relatives, with about 99.5% of DNA in common with humans. They had a brain...

In recent years, DNA analysis has shed light on the parents of Egypt’s most famous pharaoh, the boy king Tutankhamun, known to the world as King Tut. Genetic investigation identified his father as Akhenaten and his mother as Akhenaten’s sister, whose name was unknown. French Egyptologist Marc Gabolde offered a different interpretation of the DNA evidence on Thursday. Speaking at Harvard’s Science Center, Gabolde said he’s convinced that Tut’s mother was not his father’s sister, but rather his father’s first cousin, Nefertiti. Nefertiti was already known to be Akhenaten’s wife and in fact the two had six daughters. Gabolde believes...

The first modern humans to arrive in Europe and Asia migrated north out of Egypt around 55,000 years ago, according to new genetic research. The study has answered a long standing question about the route early Homo sapiens took when spreading from the African continent. It shows most Europeans and Asians living today are more closely related genetically to people living in Egypt than in Ethiopia. The first modern humans to leave Africa and spread into Asia and Europe appear to have taken a northern route out of the continent by crossing the Sinai peninsula according to new genetic research....

According to a group of geneticists in Switzerland from iGENEA, the DNA genealogy center, as many as half of all European men and 70 percent of British men share the same DNA as the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, or King Tut. For a film created for the Discovery Channel, scientists worked to reconstruct the DNA of the young male King, his father Akhenaten and his grandfather Amenhotep III. They discovered that King Tut had a DNA profile that belongs to a group called haplogroup R1b1a2. This group can be found in over 50 percent of European men and shows the researchers...

Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

Ancient and Modern Europeans Have Surprising Genetic Connection by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor | November 06, 2014 There is a surprising genetic unity between the earliest known Europeans and contemporary Europeans, ancient DNA reveals. This finding suggests that a complex network of sexual exchange may have existed across Europe over the past 50,000 years, and also helps to pinpoint when modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, the researchers said. The origin of contemporary Europeans continues to be debated. The modern human ancestors of contemporary Eurasians are believed to have left Africa about...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A "King Tut is back and he's still black" placard drew the gaze of visitors making their way to view the acclaimed exhibit at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale Saturday. Across from the entrance, about 25 demonstrators donning T-shirts marked with various pro-black slogans held up the placards. Waving the red, black and green African flag, at times moving to the beat of djembe drums on the sidewalk, they asked drivers in passing cars to honk in support of their goal: reminding people not to take the lighter-skinned portrait of King Tutankhamun on display...

King Tut's skin color a topic of controversy By Evan Henerson Staff Writer Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - Nobody can be sure exactly what the boy king Tutankhamun looked like. But a group of African-American activists charting the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition are certain of one thing: He didn't look white. Following an appearance before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Committee for the Elimination of Media Offensive to African People, and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations plan...

Monday, 30 September, 2002, 20:30 GMT 21:30 UKTut's life and death unmasked British and NZ experts have reconstructed the faceThis is the face behind the famous golden death mask of King Tutankhamun. He lived in very turbulent times and it does seem likely from what the detectives have found out that he was assassinated Scientists and special effects artists in the UK and in New Zealand employed digital techniques normally reserved for crime investigations to reconstruct what the young pharaoh might have looked like. The fibreglass bust has gone on display at London's Science Museum. It was produced to illustrate...

Philadelphia - A travelling exhibition on King Tutankhamun drew about 50 protesters in Philadelphia who denounced the popular display as racist. Molefi Asante, a professor of African-American studies at Temple University, led the demonstration on Sunday outside the Franklin Institute, claiming the exhibit has no mention of Africa and that it suggests the ancient Egyptian king was white.

In August/September 1995, I undertook my 3rd season of field research in Egypt and Nubia. I conducted primary (first-hand) research at 15 sites in 1994 and 27 sites in 1995. As I indicated in part I of this series, my work of documenting modern forgeries and studying ancient African social organization and spiritual culture was superseded by the overwhelming problem of the rapid decay and deliberate destruction of many temple and tomb carvings. The vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations is more apparent from the temple evidence than from the tombs because the temple “conservation” work is obvious from...

In the reign of the Black PharaohsWhich country has the largest collection of pyramids? Think again, for it is not Egypt, but Sudan. Join Mohamed El-Hebeishy as he visits north Sudan in search of answers The Northern Cemetery in Meroe, where more than 30 pyramids are in site Our great grandfathers called it Ta-Seti, Land of the Bow. They were referring to the area south of the First Cataract at Aswan, and the reason behind the name was the unparalleled skill its inhabitants demonstrated when using the bow as a method of arm. Those excellent bowmen were actually the Kushites....

Surprise Finds at Egypt Temple "Change Everything" Steven Stanek in Luxor, Egypt for National Geographic NewsDecember 17, 2007 A series of surprising discoveries has been made at the foot of Egypt's famous Temple of Amun at Karnak, archaeologists say. The new finds include ancient ceremonial baths, a pharaoh's private entry ramp, and the remains of a massive wall built some 3,000 years ago to reinforce what was then the bank of the Nile River. A host of other artifacts, including hundreds of bronze coins, has also been found. Together the discoveries are causing experts to reconsider the history of the...

The Sakhmet statues, which date to the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty (circa 1533 to 1292 BC), hail from the same period as most of the finds in the area. The head, believed to date to the 25th dynasty (circa 760 to 656 BC) that is characterised by its Nubian features, seems out of place, however.

This marvelous bust is one of the very few documents of an actual black person from Greek and Roman antiquity. Memnon was a pupil and protégé of the well-known Athenian entrepreneur and philosopher Herodes Atticus. It was found more than a century ago in one of several villas owned by Herodes, and it adds a face to the name of the person recorded by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists, an account of the famous philosophers of the second century. The exact circumstances of Memnon's entry into this celebrated milieu are unknown, but there is no doubt about the...

Not Out of AfricaWas Greek Culture Stolen from Africa? Modern Myth vs. Ancient History Excerpted from her book: Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History Why I wrote the book In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic about Martin Bernal's Black Athena and its relation to the Afrocentrist movement. The assignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on the article I realized that here was a subject that needed all the attention, and more, that I could give to it. Although...