A historian would like to use synthesis to learn more about a massive flood that destroyed an ancient city. Which of the following actions would help him accomplish that goal?

Was pharaoh a black man?

This is a difficult question to answer because of the controversial nature of the subject of race. Biological definitions of race and social definitions of race are often not consistent. Also unfortunately there has been a history of racist ideas in Western academia that were often fixated on separating Egypt culturally and biologically from the rest of the African continent. However mainstream, modern scholarship has advanced to the point where there are academically honest experts who can give us some answers. It has been suggested by at least one prominent Biological Anthropologist that in terms of skin color the typical modern Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the model in most of the country (see the research of Shomarka Keita on Ancient Egyptian biological affinities). That would imply a range in skin color on average from medium to dark brown. A recent study which performed a histological analysis of the skin on Ancient Egyptian noble mummies from Upper Egypt found it to be, "packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin" (see Mekota and Vermehren 2004). Skeletal remains of the Ancient Egyptians have been studied for many years. Their limb proportions have been determined to be tropical suggesting that the ancestors of the Ancient Egyptians migrated from the tropics upon settling the Nile Valley (see Zakrzewski 2004). Predynastic Egyptian crania at the time of state formation cluster with Northeastern Nilotic, Northwestern Saharan and tropical East Africans (see Keita 1993). There seems to have been a change in craniometric patterns in later periods as Late Dynastic Northern Egyptians have centroid values between African and European series. DNA analysis of 12th Dynasty mummies reveal that they have multiple lines of descent including from Sub-Saharan Africa (see Paabo and Di Rienzo 1993). The other lineages were not identified. Archeological and Linguistic research indicates that the Ancient Egyptians were indigenous to the continent of Africa (see Hassan 1988 and Ehret 1996). Art objects are not considered to be useful by Biological Anthropologists because they are suspect as data and interpretations are highly dependent on stereotyped thinking but some scholars have noted that much of the Dynastic statuary have variations on the narrow nosed, narrow faced East African facial morphology. By taking a multidisciplinary approach several modern scholars have come to the conclusion that the Ancient Egyptians were an indigenous Northeast African people who were tropically adapted and shared biological affinities with their more Southerly African neighbors. This is in reference to the early Ancient Egyptians as over time Egypt gradually absorbed foreigners from the Near East and Europe which became a recurring phenomenon after the series of invasions following the New Kingdom period. Immigration was especially significant during the Greco-Roman and Islamic periods of Egyptian history. So Ancient Egypt was indeed an indigenous African civilization and its people looked like modern Northeast Africans like those in modern Upper Egypt, Northern Sudan and the Horn of Africa. If you consider your average Upper Egyptian, Nubian, Eritrean or Somali to be Black then yes by your definition they were Black. But bare in mind that native Africans have a range of physical characteristics. They don't all have one particular phenotype. There was variation within the Nile Valley during the Dynastic period as there is in Northeast Africa today.

A historian would like to use synthesis to learn more about a massive flood that destroyed an ancient city. Which of the following actions would help him accomplish that goal?

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Was pharaoh a black man?

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