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149 points A_D_E_P_T | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.453s | source
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eddythompson80 ◴[] No.44450865[source]
I'll have to bookmark it for later to spend more time than just skimming, but I find 2 things interesting. The lack of any Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and significant findings about Ancient Egypt is one. The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool.

Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.

It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers. While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone, it's a matter of current day politics for Egyptians and especially the Egyptian government. The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.

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prmph ◴[] No.44451019[source]
And where did the Mesopotamians move from? If you don't see the political context of the science then too bad.

Like, you know people till now take pride in the exploits and culture of their supposed ancient ancestors, never mind that for the the vast majority of people, there is no simple and direct line from some ancient illustrious people to them.

The latent political context is the assumption driving the research, that Egyptian culture had to have come from somewhere else, so let's go look for it. You see the same thing when evidence of cultural achievements elsewhere in Africa is unearthed.

Of course you will find a somewhere else, no matter how tenuous the connection, in which case my first sentence above comes into play: let's keep finding the somewhere else until we all get back to Africa, supposedly the birthplace of it all.

EDIT: Since this is being misunderstood, this what I actually mean: For some reason, this finding somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsensical subtext that just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.

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eddythompson80 ◴[] No.44451080[source]
That's exactly the brand of nonesense that is sold to people there as "progressive" and "anti-colonialism" while infact it's just pure nonesense.

Of course every culture/society had to have come from some previous place/culture/society that changed over time due to an incredibly long and complex set of circumstances. The story one must believe to accept your view is that at a flick of the wrist, humans turned from Cave Men to some vague list of "root societies/civilizations" people moved around. Understanding how that movement happened 15 thousands years ago won't make the jews take over Egypt I promise.

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1. prmph ◴[] No.44451292[source]
I think you misunderstand my point. You are kind of confirming my point.

What I am saying is that for some reason, this finding somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsense that just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.

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2. wredcoll ◴[] No.44451378[source]
> Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can,

I'm not a scientist, but as far as I can tell... do that?

Half the interest in archeological type studies seems to be "ok, this the earliest history we know of, what came before that?"

I agree that humans tend to get way too entitled about (maybe) sharing genes with someone who did something cool in past history, but learning about which populations migrated to egypt and from where and when, seems unrelated.

3. pastage ◴[] No.44452245[source]
Of course nationalism and rasism infects science, especially what findings are considered canon in a culture. That only means you might have such findings not that it is the only thing created.