The genome of an Egyptian who lived more than 4,500 years ago has been fully sequenced.
This is the first time that DNA from an ancient Egyptian human has been analyzed so extensively and so early. This genetic sequencing allows us to learn more about the populations of the complex societies that lived 2,000 years before our era.
The genome of a person who lived more than 4,500 years ago in Egypt, around the time the first pyramids were built, has been fully sequenced. This is a first and sheds additional light on this fascinating period of history.
The team specifically highlighted the fact that the specimen was male, and that 80% of his genome was linked to individuals from North Africa. The remaining 20% could be attributed to people from the Fertile Crescent, particularly Mesopotamia (an area that largely corresponds to present-day Iraq). This discovery suggests that the populations of Egypt and Mesopotamia did indeed mix, as archaeological data already suggested.
“Although we need more genome data to better understand the genetic diversity of ancient Egyptian populations, our results indicate that contact between Egypt and the eastern Fertile Crescent was not limited to exchanges of objects and graphic representations (domestic animals, plants, and even the writing system), but also involved human migrations,” write the authors of the study published in Nature on July 2 .
Interviewed by the British magazine for an article intended
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