[PapaBear3625]

Where did you get that? I doubt the Egyptians were in any way related to Indo-Europeans until the advent of the Sea-peoples (after the collapse of Mycenae in 1200 BC) and then, majorly, under the Greeks and Romans.

Agriculture appears to have been developed in southwest Asia, probably Mesopotamia. It would not be unlikely for Caucasian agriculturalists to spread out from there, across the Fertile Crescent, down the Levant, and down into Egypt and North Africa, displacing any black hunter/gatherer inhabitants who might have been there earlier.

[Cronos]

wow, a thread resurrected from 2006. What was I doing in January 2006. I think I had just been 6 months in a new job in JP Morgan Chase and was using my down time to catch up on the history threads

Anyway, Papabear, to your point, Mesopotamia was first populated by Sumerians, who seem related to Elamites and the Harappan civilisation.

Most likely these were all Dravidians -- the Sumerians called themselves Sa-gi-ga or the black headed people

Now, the Dravidians are Caucasians, just not Indo-Europeans (just as Semites are Caucasians but not Indo-Europeans)

So your point about Egyptians being Caucasians (through the AfroAsiatic branch that includes Semites and Berbers), yes, but not to the Indo-European/Aryan branch

[LadyDoc]

actually, Egypt’s southern (”upper”) kingdom developed first because there was a caravan route from Thebes to the Red Sea, and also links to the very rich western Oases and to the Nubian/Ethiopian kingdoms.

The western oases theories are just being excavated, but the theory is that the folks in the savannah didn’t move into the nile valley until the Sahara dried up 12 thousand years ago.