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Near Eastern Genetic Affinity Rebuttal, 2017 Study

Earlier on the Talk page, we reached a consensus that the 2017 study could remain in the article if we could find a genuine controversy around it. The only controversy that I could find was the Keita rebuttal. Since other editors did not want to move the 2017 study to the population article, we concluded to balance it with the Keita rebuttal. I wrote and added the Keith rebuttal in August 2020.

The Keita rebuttal was completely rewritten without reaching consensus on the Talk page. I've replaced the rewrite with the version that I added in August and now we will have to work through obtaining consensus on the Talk page before we rewrite this rebuttal. Especially, considering the POV pushing tone with which the rebuttal rewrite was added. Here's the starting point for obtaining consensus:

"Keita, Gourdine, and Anselin challenged the assertions in the 2017 study. They state, "there are alternative interpretations of the results but which are not presented as is traditionally done." They go on to state, "All of the samples are from the northern half of Egypt, from one nome which is 2.4% (1/42) of AE nomes." Further they state, "the findings may have been different if samples had been used from southern Egypt...the timeline is not representative of AE history ~ 3000 years is missing...." Then they explain that "sex-biased sampling (mtDNA) cannot recover population demography of the whole country unless the sample size is large enough and representative in terms of chronology." They also state concerning PCR study results, "Results that are likely reliable are from studies that analyzed...(STRs) from Amarna royal mummies (1300 BC) and of Ramesses III (1200 BC). In those studies, "Ramesses III had the Y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a, an old African lineage." Keita/Gourdine/Anselin's "analysis of STR's from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies...indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities" (sub-saharan African). According to Keita, the 2017 DNA study defines "all mitochondrial M1 haplogroups as "Asian" which is problematic." They further state, "M1 has been postulated to have emerged in Africa, and there is no convincing evidence supporting an M1 ancestor in Asia; many M1 daughter haplogroups (M1a) are clearly African in origin and history." In conclusion, Keita/Gourdine state, "Egypt long before the pyramids was culturally and linguistically African as evidenced by numerous studies." They also state, "based on standard research...the symbolism in the Badarian or Naqadan graves, etc. nor the pyramids were brought from Asia." Finally, they state "Schuenemann et al. study is best seen as a contribution to understanding a local population history in northern Egypt as opposed to a population history of all Egypt from its inception."[51]"

Let' discuss point by point. I'll start, here's a summary of major points in the Keita paper, from my read:EditorfromMars (talk) 19:58, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

  • The 2017 study has a small sample size (2.4% of all Egyptian nomes) and is not representative of all of Ancient Egypt
  • The 2017 study's small sample size is not appropriate for recovering the population demography of an entire country of Egypt
  • The 2017 study doesn't consider 3000 years of AE history. It excludes the Middle Kingdom, Old kingdom, and associated intermediate periods before the New Kingdom. It includes Greeks and Romans, which have no bearing on AE race.
  • Other studies are reliable and contradict the 2017 study
  • Cultural and architectural norms in AE don't support an Out of Arabia theory, as you can't find equivalents to Egyptian culture/architecture in Arabia.
  • There are two theories concerning the origin of the M haplogroup. There is a Eurasian backflow theory and an African origin theory. Neither can be proved definitively and both have supporters and detractors. The 2017 study labels all M1 mtDNA as from Asia, which Keita et. all calls problematic. Several studies would say that M1 mtDNA could be indigenous to East Africa and dispersed from East Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia) ~10,000 years ago after the majority of L3/M carriers had left Africa to populate Asia and the rest of the world.
    • supporting info: "Thus, in the context of the out-of-Africa model, the following scenario can be envisaged: haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and was carried toward Asia. This agrees with the proposed date of an out-of Africa expansion approximately 65,000 years ago. After its arrival in Asia, the haplogroup M founder group went through a demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining M haplogroup in eastern Africa did not spread, but remained localized up to approximately 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which it started to expand. Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario, and in particular, other nuclear and mtDNA markers indicate eastern Africa as the origin of both African and Eurasian expansions." Quintana source - http://users.clas.ufl.edu/krigbaum/proseminar/quintana-murci_naturegenetics_1999.pdfEditorfromMars (talk) 20:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
  • We're not here to discuss data and judge based on our personal opinions. The only relevant questions here are: Is this source cited reliable? Are these authors notable academics in the area? Is the weight given to this review (almost 75% of the weight given to the main study that got huge attention in the media and is described as "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods") reasonable? Is this review supposed to get more weight than the criticism by Professor Stephen Quirke, an Egyptologist at University College London, that was cited in a reliable source? MohamedTalk 22:59, 6 September 2020 (UTC)


The 2017 study was performed by reliable specialist sources, and published in a reliable scientific journal. It was part of a stable article for a long time. Keita et al are not specialist scientific experts on the same level. They did not publish their "rebuttal" in a peer-reviewed journal. To the extent that they used DNA testing at all, they relied on the older PCR tests, which are known to produce unreliable results. Their rambling "rebuttal" was largely speculative, and does not carry the same weight as the original article. It is included merely to indicate that some Afrocentrists disagree, and it must must be written so as to reflect the relevant weight. Your long rambling "version" of this long rambling rebuttal contravenes WP:UNDUE, it was never approved by consensus, and it was therefore replaced. You cannot insert a huge chunk of mush unilaterally, and then demand consensus for cleaning up the mess. I am returning the article to its previous state. If you can justify expanding the less-reliable rebuttal by adding an extra detail or two, please propose accordingly on the talk page. Wdford (talk) 10:28, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
The consensus was to find a controversy around the 2017 study or remove it from the article, because there is no controversy. I found a controversy by adding a paragraph from Keita's paper. I added this paragraph to create a controversy, so that the 2017 study can stay in the race controversy article. There is not consensus to alter, or rewrite the paragraph that I added (excerpted above). I'm okay to take this to arbitration, because the controversial rewrite is so incredibly biased and POV pushing that it's surprising to even find it in the article. The rewrite looks like something editors would say to each other on the Talk page, not text that anyone would deem fit for the actual article.
Actually, my Keita paragraph does have consensus, as multiple editors agreed that the 2017 study needed a controversy to remain in this article. Otherwise, it would be a better fit for the population article. If my Keita rebuttal doesn't have consensus, then the 2017 study doesn't have a controversy and I will delete the 2017 study from the race controversy article, per earlier agreements on the Talk page. Your choice.EditorfromMars (talk) 14:42, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
@Memelord0 the only relevant question here is "did the 2017 study create an AE race controversy?" This is not the population article. It would be original research for Wiki editors to weigh in on the race controversy using the 2017 study to make an original point that AEs were one race or another.EditorfromMars (talk) 14:47, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Preparing for arbitration, here's a history of previous agreements on the 2017 DNA study: Summary, refocus, and WP:Undue Talk page section summary, as it relates to the 2017 study. August 21-27, 2020

  • @wdford said "Re the 2017 DNA study, I said from the beginning that all we need here is a simple statement along the lines of "the population history of Egypt has been studied in detail, using the most modern scientific methods and techniques, and it has been determined that the Ancient Egyptians were neither black nor white as per modern American social and racial definitions." I agreed with this position. Multiple editors agree that this is the best approach for the race controversy article and readers should read the population article for DNA info on Egyptians.
  • Due to his POV pushing, @wdford, Wiki editor, attempts to explain that he knows better than the phD's writing the Keita article about which DNA study methods are most appropriate. We should believe the Wike editor and not the phDs that wrote their own article.
  • @wdford admits that the 2017 study authors agree with the Keita study that the sample size is small to draw conclusions on the entire Egyptian population.
  • @wdford agrees to include the rebuttal, because it keeps the controversy alive, but then launches into a series of unprofessional insults when asking to thin down the rebuttal paragraph.
  • @editorfromMars agreed with the simple statement approach offered by @wdford
  • On the Talk page, @wdford labels the phDs that wrote the Keita paper as Afrocentrists, although the official Wiki policy is not to promote Afrocentrists vs Eurocentrists content in this article.
  • @wdford continues to demonstrate his bias and attempts to explain that he knows more about DNA testing than the phDs that wrote the Keita paper.
  • editorfromMars reiterates the position that, if there is no controversy around the 2017 study, then it should not be in the controversy article. He also mentions that including Greek and Roman mummies in the studies clouds the issue of AE race, as Greeks and Romans are not Ancient Egyptians and mainstream science acknowledges that Greeks and Romans are different from the indigenous Nile valley population that created AE.
  • wdford confirms that he's trying to use the 2017 study as original research to essentially create a new theory on AE race, or bolster one of the older debunked theories. The problems is the 2017 DNA study is not a paper about AE race, as modern scientists don't believe in the concept of race. Therefore, SYNTH and original research is required to make the 2017 study about race. In contrast, the authors of the older theories explicitly attempted to prove that AE's were one race or another with their theories and used supporting evidence in an attempt to prove their theories. The supporting evidence is varied, but the supporting evidence is introduced by author's of a race based theory, or race based controversy, not by Wikipedia editor's as original research.
  • @editorfromMars reiterates his position as "I will state again for 10th time, I have never advocated for removal of the 2017 DNA study, just moving it to the population article, or presenting opposing views on the 2017 study to highlight the controversy. That's my position. I'm okay with either approach."

Preparing for arbitration, here's a history of previous agreements on the 2017 DNA study: Caucasian Talk page section summary, as it relates to the 2017 study. August 29-September 6, 2020

  • @wdford attempts to bolster the caucasian theory of AE race with modern DNA research, August 29th
  • @editorfromMars requests a spin off article of the Caucasian theory to contain additional details, as was done for the black theory
  • @editorfromMars offers to expand all theories with additional details to maintain the article's balance
  • @editorfromMars reviews other Wiki articles and the sources cited by @wdford and notes that there are alternative conclusions and theories available, as compared to the 2017 DNA study. In other words, the 2017 DNA study has not gained general consensus, as the Out of Africa to human migrations has. It's not a widespread view and it's Wiki article only had about one paragraph's worth of content, which highlights that it's not a very popular view.
  • @editorfromMars notes that the AE race controversial article is about Egypt, but @wdfords' source admits that Egyptians have almost none of the U6 mtDNA genetic material used in the source. A non-biased and objective reader will notice that the U6 info is not a good fit for an article on Egypt, because Egyptians don't have U6.
  • @editorfromMars also highlights that U6 is not found in Europe, although @wdford wants to add U6 mtDNA info to the Caucasian theory. There are 740 million Caucasian people in Europe and they don't have this genetic marker. It's a bad fit for the article.
  • @editorfromMars highlights that an objective read of all mtDNA articles provided by @wdford will illustrate that study authors admit that they cannot rule out an African origin for M and N haplogroups. This is a competing theory with the Eurasian backflow theory. Both theories have supporters. @wdford is not following NPOV by failing to admit and balance the Eurasian backflow theory comments with competing theories from modern scholarship that state, some African L3/M/N carriers left around 55,000 year ago to populate the rest of the planet. However, some M and N remained localized in East Africa and dispersed from East Africa to populate North Africa with M and N haplogroups around 10,000 years ago. Similarly, there is a competing theory that U6 is indigenous to Northwest Africa and radiated from there (Egyptians still don't have it).
  • @editorfromMars provided links to competing theories to balance the Eurasian backflow theory, which apparently doesn't have widespread support/interest, judging from the lack of content in the Eurasian backflow theory Wiki article.
  • @editorfromMars reminds @wdford that it's original research to put DNA study info in the older white theory section of the article, as no authors used the DNA study to further the white/caucasian theory. @editorfromMars suggested the position of modern scholarship section of the article.
  • @wdford agreed that the position of modern scholarship was a better section for DNA content
  • @editorfromMars reminds @wdford that the M and N haplogroups in @wdford's sources are found in very low frequencies in Africa and reminds all editors that the article is about Egypt, in Africa.
  • @editorfromMars reminds all editors that AE history is more than 5000 years old and according to the Eurasian backflow article the backflow from Eurasia to Africa happened 3000 years ago, which missed the first 2000 years of recorded AE history, not to mention AE proto and prehistory.
  • @editorfromMars offers several examples that there are competing theories in modern scholarship for haplogroup M, N, and subgroup (e.g. U) origins. These need to balance any theory on Eurasian origin, because there is no conclusive evidence that the Eurasian backflow theory has gained widespread acceptance and in fact there's ample evidence that the general consensus in the academic community is in favor of the Out of Africa theory. The Out of Africa theory allows for M and N haplogroup origin in East Africa.
  • Tying this back to the 2017 study, the 2017 study groups all mummies with M haplogroup DNA as having an origin in Asia, although modern scholarship states that M haplogroup is prevalent in Somalia and Oromos in Ethiopia and that the M haplogroup could be indigenous to East Africa with dispersal around 10,000 years ago to other parts of Africa. This casts doubt on the 2017 study's classification system, which was highlighted by Keita in the rebuttal paper. This is why editors that are pushing a POV want to dilute the impact of the Keita paper, as it highlights the glaring problem with the 2017 study, which assumes that anyone with M haplogroup mtDNA info must be from outside of Africa, when they could just as easily be indigenous to modern day Somalia or Ethiopia.
  • @editorfromMars asks @wdford would he like to limit his article edit proposal to M haplogroup only, as N and U6 can't be found in Egypt in any meaningful amount.
  • @editorfromMars copied info from other Wiki articles to highlight the prevalence of the competing Indigenous to Africa M haplogroup theory (N and U6 are not in Egypt). Examples:
  • Haplogroup M is also relatively common in Northeast Africa, occurring especially among Somalis, Libyans and Oromos at frequencies over 20%.[14][15]
  • "Thus, in the context of the out-of-Africa model, the following scenario can be envisaged: haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and was carried toward Asia. This agrees with the proposed date of an out-of Africa expansion approximately 65,000 years ago. After its arrival in Asia, the haplogroup M founder group went through a demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining M haplogroup in eastern Africa did not spread, but remained localized up to approximately 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which it started to expand. Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario, and in particular, other nuclear and mtDNA markers indicate eastern Africa as the origin of both African and Eurasian expansions."EditorfromMars (talk) 15:55, 7 September 2020 (UTC)


I agree that there was a consensus to add a counter-point from the Afrocentrists, to demonstrate that they were not prepared to accept the cutting edge science of the 2017 study. However we did NOT have consensus to allow you to insert a large "summary" of the overall Black Hypothesis, and we certainly did NOT agree to waive WP:UNDUE. Your "version" never achieved consensus as it stood, and the weighting has now been corrected. I am happy to improve it further by consensus, but I am not happy to drown the article once more in non-peer-reviewed Afrocentric protestations.
I am still happy to put the Eurasian Backflow material into the Modern scholarship section. I am obviously happy to also include an appropriate counterpoint for balance. Thus far I have accumulated a few papers on the subject. I am extracting these comments from the Abstract/Results/Conclusions sections, which represent the findings of the skilled scientists who checked the actual data in depth. (The format for these results is not identical for each paper.) I am not scratching around in the fine print for isolated sentences which "prove" anything, I am using only the overall findings as expressed by the teams of experts in each case.
Maca-Meyer et al – 2003 [1]:
  • World-wide phylogeographic distribution of human complete mitochondrial DNA sequences suggested a West Asian origin for the autochthonous North African lineage U6.
  • The most probable origin of the proto-U6 lineage was the Near East. Around 30,000 years ago it spread to North Africa where it represents a signature of regional continuity.
  • This paper also states, in the Backgroud section - Attested presence of Caucasian people in Northern Africa goes up to Paleolithic times. Interesting.
Luis et al – 2004 [2]:
  • Oman and Egypt’s NRY frequency distributions appear to be much more similar to those of the Middle East than to any sub-Saharan African population, suggesting a much larger Eurasian genetic component.
Olivieri et al – 2006 [3]:
  • Sequencing of 81 entire human mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) belonging to haplogroups M1 and U6 reveals that these predominantly North African clades arose in southwestern Asia and moved together to Africa about 40,000 to 45,000 years ago.
Gonzalez et al – 2007 [4]:
  • The M1 geographic distribution and the relative ages of its different subclades clearly correlate with those of haplogroup U6, for which an Eurasian ancestor has been demonstrated.
  • The M1 geographic distribution and the relative ages of its different subclades clearly correlate with those of haplogroup U6, for which an Eurasian ancestor has been demonstrated.
  • This study provides evidence that M1, or its ancestor, had an Asiatic origin.
Henn et al – 2012 [5]:
  • North African populations are distinct from sub-Saharan Africans based on cultural, linguistic, and phenotypic attributes,
  • In most North African populations we also see substantial shared ancestry with the Near East, and to a lesser extent sub-Saharan Africa and Europe.
  • A migration of individuals with Nilotic ancestry into Egypt occurred about 25 generations ago (approximately 750 ya).
Hervella et al – 2016 [6]:
  • The presence of the basal haplogroup U6* in South East Europe (Romania) at 35 ky BP confirms a Eurasian origin of the U6 mitochondrial lineage. Consequently, we propose that the PM1 lineage is an offshoot to South East Europe that can be traced to the Early Upper Paleolithic back migration from Western Asia to North Africa, during which the U6 lineage diversified, until the emergence of the present-day U6 African lineages.
This scholarship shows that there is a lot of scientific evidence proving that a backflow from Asia into Africa did actually take place, long before the Dynastic age. On the other side, the Quintana paper does not actually state that there was no such Asian back-flow, it merely speculates that some of the M1 carriers might never have left Africa to begin with. Unless you have a number of papers clearly stating that There Was Never Any Asian Back-flow Into North Africa, these conclusions must stand, and the so-called "competing theory" cannot be given equal weight as per WP:UNDUE. Wdford (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Just to be clear, I and Wdford were indeed in favour of summarizing the 2017 study because it wasn't covered in relation to the controversy. That was before I knew the 2017 study has recently been covered in direct relation to the controversy in a new book by Dr Nicky Nielsen, Lecturer in Egyptology in Manchester university, He directly links it to the controversy and Diop's Black Egyptian hypothesis and says that the 2017 study showed a "significant minority" had subsaharan ancestry, he says that means it's possible that Diop did find melanin in the small samples he studied (although there are multiple issues with this approach as the author states) and he further says that the main issue is the decision to use this minority as proof of the ethnicity of the entire Ancient Egyptian population. He also makes it clear that the majority of participants at the symposium and the majority of Egyptologists to this day agree that applying modern concepts of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic, and that there has always been a difference in genetic affinity between northern and southern Egypt, back then and till this day. MohamedTalk 02:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
I think we need arbitration at this point. You're hopelessly biased on this topic, you're pushing a POV, and your rewrite of my rebuttal did not obtain consensus. Conversely, all editors agreed that a rebuttal was needed in order to create a controversy and justify the retention of the 2017 DNA study in the article. I boldly edited and created a rebuttal, per the consensus on the Talk page. You do not have my agreement to edit my rebuttal, as you're extremely biased on this topic, your rewrite is controversial and does not use neutral language, and I do not agree to your POV pushing rewrite, masquerading as an WP:UNDUE edit.
  • I have provided numerous examples from several sources just above this text, which clearly demonstrates that there are two competing views on M haplogroup origins. L3 can only be found in Africa and M and N are descendants of L3, per the indisputable Out of Africa view, which has mainstream consensus in the academic community. One view of what happened next is the Eurasian backflow view. The other view of what happened next is, the mutation to M and N happened just before the Out of Africa event about 50,000 year ago. A localized group of M haplogroup carriers REMAINED IN EAST AFRICA and dispersed the M haplogroup within Africa from their East African locale around 10,000 years ago (much earlier than pre-proto dynastic Egypt). I can keep copy/pasting this text again and again until you realize that your biased POV pushing view is not the only theory available on M and N haplogroup origins. Even your sources admit that they cannot rule out an African origin of proto-U6 and ancestral M and N, while concluding they favor the Eurasian backflow theory.
  • U6 is irrelevant to this article on Ancient Egypt, because Egyptians don't have the U6 marker. It's a better fit for an article on Algeria. To state otherwise is original research and/or SYNTH.
  • L3's female descendants, the M and N haplogroup lineages, are found in very low frequencies in Africa. See the Out of Africa Wiki article
  • Much discussion concerning the origins of haplogroup M has been related to its subclade haplogroup M1, which is the only variant of macro-haplogroup M found in Africa.[1] Two possibilities were being considered as potential explanations for the presence of M1 in Africa:
  1. M was present in the ancient population which later gave rise to both M1 in Africa, and M more generally found in Eurasia.[2]
  2. The presence of M1 in Africa is the result of a back-migration from Asia which occurred sometime after the Out of Africa migration.[3]
  • According to this theory, haplogroups M and N arose from L3 in an East African population ancestral to eurasians that had been isolated from other African populations before the OOA event. Members of this population were involved in the out Africa migration and may have only carried M and N lineages. With the possible exception of haplogroup M1, all other M and N clades in Africa were lost due to admixture with other African populations and genetic drift.[4][2]
  • The African origin of Haplogroup M is supported by the following arguments and evidence.
  1. L3, the parent clade of haplogroup M, is found throughout Africa, but is rare outside Africa.[2] According to Toomas Kivisild (2003), "the lack of L3 lineages other than M and N in India and among non-African mitochondria in general suggests that the earliest migration(s) of modern humans already carried these two mtDNA ancestors, via a departure route over the Horn of Africa."[4]
  • The majority of the M1a lineages found outside and inside Africa had a more recent eastern Africa origin.
  • Haplogroup M is also relatively common in Northeast Africa, occurring especially among Somalis, Libyans and Oromos at frequencies over 20%.[5][6] Toward the northwest, the lineage is found at comparable frequencies among the Tuareg in Mali and Burkina Faso; particularly the M1a2 subclade (18.42%).[7]
  • "Thus, in the context of the out-of-Africa model, the following scenario can be envisaged: haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and was carried toward Asia. This agrees with the proposed date of an out-of Africa expansion approximately 65,000 years ago. After its arrival in Asia, the haplogroup M founder group went through a demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining M haplogroup in eastern Africa did not spread, but remained localized up to approximately 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which it started to expand. Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario, and in particular, other nuclear and mtDNA markers indicate eastern Africa as the origin of both African and Eurasian expansions." Quintana source - http://users.clas.ufl.edu/krigbaum/proseminar/quintana-murci_naturegenetics_1999.pdfEditorfromMars (talk) 15:00, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
@Memelord0 thanks for the Nicky Nielsen info. At least we can now say that the 2017 DNA study actually belongs in this race controversy article, as opposed to only the Population article.EditorfromMars (talk) 15:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Concerning the sources posted by @wdford just above:

  • Maca-Meyer: Egyptians don't have U6. It's original research and SYNTH to try to add U6 mtDNA info to an article about the Ancient Egyptian race controversy.
  • Luis et al: Modern scholarship has a consensus that the Ancient Egyptian civilization is indigenous to the Nile valley. That precludes an origin in Mesopotamia These two ideas are diametrically opposed. It is impossible to be both indigenous to the Nile valley and from Mesopotamia. There is no need to discuss sub-saharan africa, as the term is anachronistic to the time period being discussed and modern scholarship's position is that AE was built by Nile valley inhabitants, not people from Nigeria or Tanzania or South Africa. As mentioned before, if you're trying to tie this back to race, there are plenty of black people in the Nile valley (e.g. Nubians) to both satisfy the indigenous to the Nile valley claim and the black claim. Only racists believe that black people are confined to the area south of the sahara, as clearly there are numerous black people living in the Nile valley (e.g. Nubians). There is profound disagreement with any statement that Nubians are not black, considering the modern construct on which this article is based.
  • Olivieri et al: Egyptians don't have U6. It's original research and SYNTH to try to add U6 mtDNA info to an article about the Ancient Egyptian race controversy. There is a competing theory that the M haplogroup is native to Africa (descended from L3 and never left) and dispersed from East Africa around 10,000 years ago. You can find this alternative theory in any Wiki article on the Out of Africa view, M haplogroup, etc. You can also find it mentioned in the sources posted by @wdford, as they highlight that they cannot rule out this alternative theory.
  • Gonzales et al: There is a competing theory that the M haplogroup is native to Africa (descended from L3 and never left) and dispersed from East Africa around 10,000 years ago. You can find this alternative theory in any Wiki article on the Out of Africa view, M haplogroup, etc. You can also find it mentioned in the sources posted by @wdford, as they highlight that they cannot rule out this alternative theory.
  • Henn et al: Modern scholarship has a consensus that the Ancient Egyptian civilization is indigenous to the Nile valley. That precludes an origin in Mesopotamia These two ideas are diametrically opposed. It is impossible to be both indigenous to the Nile valley and from Mesopotamia. There is no need to discuss sub-saharan africa, as the term is anachronistic to the time period being discussed and modern scholarship's position is that AE was built by Nile valley inhabitants, not people from Nigeria or Tanzania or South Africa. As mentioned before, if you're trying to tie this back to race, there are plenty of black people in the Nile valley (e.g. Nubians) to both satisfy the indigenous to the Nile valley claim and the black claim. Only racists believe that black people are confined to the area south of the sahara, as clearly there are numerous black people living in the Nile valley (e.g. Nubians).
  • Hervella et al: Egyptians don't have U6. It's original research and SYNTH to try to add U6 mtDNA info to an article about the Ancient Egyptian race controversy.

@wdford will be too biased to review these objective, balanced, statements of fact and find that U6 doesn't belong in this article at all, as Egyptians don't have U6. He will also fail to see the glaring contradiction between modern scholarship's consensus that the AE civilization is indigenous to the Nile valley and his POV pushing that the AE civilization came from Mesopotamia. These two positions cannot coexist in the same space. Finally, there is a widely available, perfectly legitimate native African origin theory for all mtDNA groups discussed above. It competes with the Eurasian backflow theory. There is no widespread consensus, or even popularity for the Eurasian backflow theory. When I reviewed the Wiki article for the Eurasian backflow theory, it only had about one paragraph worth of content, which highlights that it isn't very popular or widespread. Any topic that many people care about will have a much longer Wiki article.EditorfromMars (talk) 15:33, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


Consensus was never obtained for your expansive wording of the rebuttal, which contravenes WP:UNDUE. You were never given a blank check to word it as you please. You were bold, and you were reverted. Now you must discuss, on the talk page. Continuing to reinsert your non-consensus wording is edit-warring.
If you wish to add something to my summary, then please say so - on Talk. If it's valid and not UNDUE, we can agree. Alternately we can dump this rebuttal completely, and use a reference to the Nielsen material instead.
The point of all the sources I provided is the same – there was substantial Eurasian back-migration into Egypt long before the Dynastic period. You cannot personally argue against reliable sources, unless you publish a peer-reviewed paper of your own. You can offer your own source, which is actually on a different topic and which mentions the possibility of a residual African M1 in passing – that is fine, provided it is given proper weight.
There is zero contradiction between modern scholarship's consensus that the AE civilization is indigenous to the Nile valley, and the FACT that there was significant Eurasian back-migration long before the Dynastic period. "Indigenous development" means it was developed by the people who were there, it was not imported by a subsequent coloniser. Aztec civilisation was an indigenous development, even though the subsequent Spanish invasion brought their own culture and religion with them to Mexico. The indigenous people in the Nile Valley who built the AE civilisation had significant Asian admixture millennia before the Dynastic period, and millennia before Mesopotamian civilisation existed. This is clear from the many scientific sources I cited, even if you disagree with all those many scientists. The "indigenous" AE's were also heavily influenced by Mesopotamian culture and architecture of their own time, as is also clear from uncontested archaeology.
The validity of a theory is not dependent on how long the Wiki article is for that topic. Validity is based on scientific sources, not length of wiki-articles. I can – and soon will – greatly enlarge that article with all the scientific evidence I have accidentally accumulated. Wdford (talk) 16:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Your bias and POV pushing is clouding your judgment. Actually, I was not reverted. A revert would return the section to the state before I added the rebuttal paragraph. That state includes the 2017 DNA study with no rebuttal to create a controversy. The consensus on the Talk page was to add a rebuttal and I wrote it. You don't have my agreement to overwrite my rebuttal, which was added via the consensus on the Talk page. Instead of a revert, you actually rewrote my paragraph using biased, non-neutral language without gaining consensus. Your bias makes you think that you can ignore all rules and decorum on Wiki to push your point of view.
I don't agree with your biased claims of undue regarding my paragraph. I think that you blatantly want to prevent lay readers from seeing, as they might by just reading the M haplogroup article, that the Eurasia backflow theory is not the only theory for the origin of ancestral M. You also want the 2017 study to not be critiqued, while you are tireless in adding critiques of any content from other viewpoints that are added by other editors. As I said before, this issue needs arbitration, because you are hopelessly biased in your POV pushing on this topic and can't respect Wikipedia rules due to your "passion" around trying to prove that Indigenous Nile valley inhabitants are actually from Mesopotamia.
Furthermore, you are actually the one edit warring by continually removing my paragraph, which was added after gaining consensus on the Talk page to add a rebuttal to the 2017 DNA study and generate an actual controversy so that the 2017 DNA study could remain in the AE race controversy article. If you don't like my bold edit, per the consensus on the Talk page, you need to get consensus on the Talk page to modify it, especially if your modification is going to use biased, non-neutral, and extremely controversial language. My original paragraph precedes/predates your overwrite, which never gained consensus on the Talk page. You are not fit to write the critique of the 2017 DNA study, because you can't write the critique in a neutral manner and convey the major points of other authors with opposing views.EditorfromMars (talk) 22:20, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
I am not personally arguing anything. I provided cited sources just above highlighting the quite widespread "M haplogroup is native to East Africa" theory. I can copy/paste them again below, if you would like. The Keita paper opens the window to the discussion of M haplogroup origins by disagreeing with the 2017 DNA study's classification of any mummies with M haplogroup as Asian. This is why you're so intent on censoring the Keita paper, as it opens the door to the widespread info that there are actually competing theories on the origins of M and N and U6, and it's not settled science. We need arbitration because every position that you're taking is not based on objectivity, balance, or any other Wiki principles. It's only based on your singular goal which is to prove that the indigenous Nile valley inhabitants (per mainstream scholar's consensus) are actually from Arabia. It's an original research crusade that's contradicted by mainstream science. The Native to Africa M haplogroup theory provides for East African people dispersing the Native African M haplogroup throughout Africa, including Egypt 10,000 years ago. Before pre and proto-AE. Therefore, any M haplogroup DNA in Egyptian mummies could just as easily have originated in Somalia or modern day Ethiopia as Arabia (not my words, analysis). Your sources prefer the Eurasian backflow theory. They also concede that the Native African origin theory is possible.EditorfromMars (talk) 22:27, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Let's review just one of your original research claims. Just above @wdford states: "The indigenous people in the Nile Valley who built the AE civilisation had significant Asian admixture millennia before the Dynastic period, and millennia before Mesopotamian civilisation existed."

  • Based on what secondary sources is the conclusion drawn that Pre and proto dynastic AEs had significant Asian admixture?
  • Modern scholarship states quite emphatically that they were indigenous to the Nile Valley, which is in Africa not Asia.
  • In your sources above you tried to use SYNTH and Original research to suggest that because of theorized U6 migrations from Asia to Africa, that AEs must be from Asia. However, after a cursory read of your source, I quickly noticed that Egyptians DON'T HAVE THE U6 GENETIC MARKER and yet you keep trying to use U6 to prove your original research that Egyptians are from Asia.
  • Then, I offered you an olive branch and said "would you like to change your proposed edit to state that Egyptians received their M haplogroup genetic material from Asia?"
  • This raises another problem as the origin of M haplogroup is disputed with some sources saying it came to Africa from Asia via backflow and other sources saying that M descended from L3 inside Africa, with part of the group departing to populate Asia around 50,000 years ago and the rest of the group remaining IN EAST AFRICA and dispersing the M haplogroup from East Africa to other parts of Africa, like Egypt. Because it doesn't agree with your POV pushing, you want to pretend that the alternate theory doesn't exist, even though it is clearly outlined in the Wiki M haplogroup article and cited sources, such as Quintana. I didn't need to scour the internet for it. It was conveniently there for me, everywhere that I looked, including your sources.
  • An objective, non-biased person would write (as Keita and the M haplogroup Wiki article did) that the origin of M haplogroup is disputed and could be from Asian backflow or Native to East Africa (like all M ancestral mtDNA material, e.g. L3). That's the appropriate way to not push your POV on Wiki readersEditorfromMars (talk) 02:33, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


Your own bias and POV pushing are very apparent in the way you "discuss" the issues, and the way you descend into ad hominem attacks once the evidence has piled up against your POV.
As you requested, I will revert the "rebuttal" in full to the previous stable state, in terms of WP:BRD and WP:UNDUE. I was happy to simply fix it, but if you insist on being pedantic, we can start from scratch.
You originally wanted the 2017 DNA study excluded because, in your opinion, it wasn't "controversial". When the error in your reasoning was pointed out, you demanded to include a "rebuttal" so as to highlight the existence of a controversy.
At 17:42 on 20 August – you added your "rebuttal" for the first time here [7]. Then, at 06:41 on 21 August (ie the next day), you wrote on talk "I support relocation to the population article. If it must remain, I've posted a rebuttal by four authors (same report/paper). Three of four are ph.D's and one is MD and Phil.D." There was never a consensus for you to use this wording in the first place, and in fact you added it before you even discussed it on talk. Your claim otherwise is false. I responded at length on the talk page at 14:17 that same day.[8]
You then smothered the issue in diversions mixing haplotypes, black queens, dimorphism, a straw-man argument about the out-of-Africa model, and a slightly-bizarre diversion into the Jablonski "predictive model" – which turns out to demonstrate that the Ancient Egyptians must have been the same colour as Arabs after all
The other editors agreed that including a rebuttal is appropriate, but your wording was never discussed on talk, far less agreed upon. You are now edit-warring to keep that version in the article, despite never seeking nor obtaining consensus.
When you attempt to seek consensus for an appropriate rebuttal, please bear in the mind the following so as to speed up the process of building the encyclopaedia:
  • The paragraph to be added must meet the requirements of WP:UNDUE.
  • The Keita paper was not peer-reviewed, and was written by people who are not experts in the same field as the 2017 paper they were "rebutting". No objective person would ever regard Keita as objective on this topic either.
  • The 2017 study was performed by reliable specialist sources, and published in a reliable scientific journal. It was part of a stable article for a long time. Keita et al are not specialist scientific experts on the same level. They did not publish their "rebuttal" in a peer-reviewed journal.
  • To the extent that Keita et al used DNA testing at all, they relied on the older PCR tests, which are known to produce unreliable results. They took a small sample of STR's (which has limitations [9]) and used the web-based popAffiliator1 to come up with a result. The inventors of popAffiliator1 have been open about its many deficiencies – they have actually stated that "However, researchers should always be aware that this information is just a first indication, which should be confirmed by other genetic and non-genetic evidence if the population affiliation is really essential to resolve a case. This is especially true for populations which result from a high miscegenation between population groups, such as populations from the Near East or America, for which, in any case, most individuals will have a real mixed ancestry." [10] Keita used a sample of one or two families, each represented by two to four individuals – compared to the large samples used by the various other scientific teams, who were actual experts themselves. And yet Keita complains about the sample size of the 2017 study …..
  • The so-called "alternative" claim that M1 may have originated in East Africa is actually irrelevant. The 2017 paper did not depend on M1, and Keita's focus thereon was a diversion.
  • The 2017 study used Y-DNA as well, which is not part of the M1 saga.
  • In addition, E1b1a is present in the Middle East as well, and so its presence in Ramesses III proves nothing – again, it is far too light to "match" the many scientific papers which state that Eurasian back-flow in predynastic times was a reality.
  • A large number of scientific papers have been presented which clearly support my statement that "The indigenous people in the Nile Valley who built the AE civilisation had significant Asian admixture millennia before the Dynastic period, and millennia before Mesopotamian civilisation existed." The current size of the wiki-article on the Eurasia backflow theory is irrelevant.
  • The Quintana paper was not considering anything other than identifying "the precise route by which modern humans left Africa." In passing they noted that "it is plausible that haplogroup M already existed in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago", and they "envisaged" a "scenario" in which this hypothetical group of M-carriers stayed localised in East Africa until 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which they started to expand. Nowhere does Quintana suggest that there was no Eurasian back-flow. Nowhere does Quintana suggest that the East Africa M-carriers expanded as far as Egypt, far less that they reached Egypt in time to participate in the AE development. On the other hand, a lot of scientific evidence presented clearly supports the Eurasian back-flow as fact. Using Quintana to "counter-balance" all that evidence confirming the Eurasian back-flow position is thus contravening WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE. You can validly say that some Afrocentrists "dispute" the Eurasian back-flow, but WP:UNDUE does not support your current wording.
  • Copying in reams of text from other wiki-articles really doesn't improve anything.
Your "version" of this long rambling rebuttal contravenes WP:UNDUE, it was never approved by consensus, and it has now been totally reverted, as per WP:BRD and WP:UNDUE. We are not averse to including a properly weighted "rebuttal", but the wording thereof needs to be agreed on talk first. I have offered a starting point, and we can finish it ourselves too, but maybe you want to do the first draft? Wdford (talk) 15:05, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
Your hopelessly biased, unprofessional, POV pushing rebuttal starting point is a joke and you are the last person that should even attempt the rebuttal. You are too biased to do it justice.
  • My position has always been and remains, find a controversy or move it to the Population article. When I included my rebuttal, there was no 2017 DNA study controversy, as there were no papers/books cited that disagreed with it. The only rebuttals that were offered by other editors were deemed not worthy of inclusion, leaving the 2017 study without a controversy.
  • Your Wiki pronouncements are hypocritical to an extreme. You claim that I didn't seek consensus before adding a rebuttal and yet you didn't seek consensus before overwriting my rebuttal with that POV pushing travesty of a rewrite. Only a hypocrite of the most extreme type would even try to make this argument.
  • The Keita paper does not agree with your Wiki assessment of the classification system used by the 2017 study. According to the phD's in the Keita paper, the 2017 DNA study classified all M haplogroup mummies as Asian. That is written in the Keita paper and it's not up to you to determine what Keita et al really meant. You are trying to censor the Keita paper because it disagrees with your POV pushing.
  • The rebuttal contains the same points made in the M haplogroup article, which is "there's an alternate theory for origin of M." The Quintana paper is not the only source, it can be found in the other sources cited above.
  • In passing, your papers mentioned that they cannot rule out a native Northwest African origin for U6, but you're too biased to admit that fact, although we can all read it for ourselves in the sources that you cited. Yet, we still find you pushing a POV on the Talk page where you know better than all cited sources about the Native African theory for M and N. YOU ARE NOT THE EXPERT. You are a Wiki editor. I've already provided the sources, as citations in the text above. Why do you keep asking for info that I've already provided? Scroll up.
  • Your version of the long rambling Cleopatra section was perfectly fine for the article, until I pointed out that it was WP:UNDUE and various editors agreed with me. You have no credibility and my paragraph is not very long. You're abusing Wiki's rules to push your POV, which is why I'm calling for arbitration.
  • You said it yourself, "the other editors agreed that a rebuttal was needed." Since then, you've been on a crusade to overwrite (without consensus) and now eliminate a rebuttal that was agreed upon by multiple editors. Thus, you are edit warring and going against the consensus to add a rebuttal.
  • If I read your papers, as I've done with two examples that you posted before, they will probably say something like "we can't rule out an African origin for M/N/U6, which we used in this paper to draw our conclusions, but we favor the Eurasian backflow theory." That's been the consistent theme that I've seen everywhere I look since reviewing your sources, reviewing the M and N haplogroup articles, and reviewing the sources supporting the alternate Native to East Africa M haplogroup theory.
  • The Race controversy article highlights that only 3 of the 90 mummies in the 2017 study used full genome DNA info (Y chromosome, etc.). Therefore, just as Keita noted, the vast majority of the conclusions drawn in the 2017 study rely on M haplogroup mtDNA classification. Your bias will prevent you from noticing that obvious infoEditorfromMars (talk) 23:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I had a chance to read the entire 2017 study carefully. Here's what I found, which should help with arbitration:

  • About 51% of the 90 individuals/mummies studied were from the non-indigenous Greek and Roman periods. Modern scholarship states that the AE civilization was indigenous to the Nile valley
  • The 2017 study highlights the significant and substantial Greek immigration and Roman settlement in the area sampled by the 2017 study.
  • The 2017 study does not speak to race at all, so I'm not seeing how it fits in a race controversy article. The only mention of anything close to race is concerning skin color of one (maybe 2) individuals studied and their skin pigmentation. Shall we draw conclusions for the race of the entire AE civilization based on those one or two individuals in the 2017 study? Is there some Wiki SYNTH or original research position tying disputed mtDNA M haplogroup results to race? As I understand the timeline using the Eurasian backflow theory and the mainstream Out of Africa view, the African ancestors would have left Africa carrying L3 around 50,000 years ago and returned with a mutated M haplogroup about 35,000 years ago to disperse M within Africa. Is the Wiki SYNTH and original research making the claim that the 15,000 years that the African homo sapiens spent outside of Africa before returning home constitutes a race? Where is that assertion in a secondary source? I would like to remind all that Somalis and Oromo Ethiopians have considerable M haplogroup %, so M haplogroup carriers are not racially homogeneous (as various groups outside of Africa also carry M haplogroup).
  • As expected, @wdford is distorting the facts to fit his POV pushing. Only 3 of the 90 individuals studied considered genetic material other than mitochondrial DNA. Per my previous comments, the 2017 study is almost entirely based on mtDNA evidence.
  • Therefore, Keita's paper highlighting the possible improper classification of M1 mtDNA haplogroups as Asian is of paramount importance.
  • I've cited at least four sources that speak to the alternate M and N haplogroup origin theory, which can also be easily found by just reading the M haplogroup Wiki article (not my edit, was already there).
  • @wdford please stop edit warring and removing my rebuttal, which was added per the mid-August consensus on the Talk pageEditorfromMars (talk) 03:51, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


Your ad hominem attacks are illegal on Wikipedia, and need to cease. Get a grip.
You certainly did NOT seek consensus before adding your rambling rebuttal, as my diffs clearly show. This FACT is obvious, and cannot be weaselled away.
If Keita is wilfully misinterpreting the 2017 paper, then he is not a reliable source. I've noticed that you also tend to misinterpret the statements of editors with whom you disagree.
The 2017 paper never raised the issue of M1 at all, so having Keita insert the issue needs to be better explained.
If you are going to insert the M1 "rebuttal" into the article, then we need to also introduce the many papers that you are trying to rebut. Claims that M1 may perhaps have been left behind in East Africa, DO NOT in any way overturn the many papers that show there was a substantial Eurasian back-migration – you are blatantly SYNTHing this to prop up your POV. I am waiting for papers that actually claim there was no back-flow. Please stop wriggling around, and address the actual question.
The Cleopatra section was fully sourced to reliable sources. It was reduced by creating a separate daughter article, following EXTENSIVE CONSULTATION ON TALK.
Your original version of a "rebuttal" was NEVER agreed upon by anybody, as the diffs clearly show. That lie cannot stand unchallenged.
Your insertion about mummies being from the Greek and Roman periods is SYNTH and WP:OR. The Egyptian people were not removed and replaced by foreigners in the Greek and Roman periods – in fact, many sources say that these take-overs at the top had very little impact on the population itself. Claiming that half the mummies were thus foreigners, is not true, and even Keita did not make that claim as far as I can see.
"Disputed" mtDNA results were introduced by you. The 2017 paper said that the mummies showed greater connection with Asian people rather than modern Egyptians or SSA – you and Keita are the only ones making a fuss about M1.
Nobody is claiming that the time spent in Asia created a "new race". In fact, modern scholarship actually insists that there is no such thing as race. I'm glad you are finally arguing yourself around to this obvious reality.
I think your latest "version" is a big improvement on the first version, which you added WITHOUT CONSENSUS, but you still have not attempted to seek consensus. This wording should be agreed first on talk – as we did with the Cleopatra section.
Wdford (talk) 11:01, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  • The newly added version by EditorfromMars is a clear case of synthesis of material and original research, while also distorting what the 2017 study actually says. The edit claims "The study highlights "substantial" population growth in the Abusir el-Meleq sample area from "Greek immigration" and Roman army settlement and intermarriage", while the study literally says "Our genetic time transect suggests genetic continuity between the Pre-Ptolemaic, Ptolemaic and Roman populations of Abusir el-Meleq, indicating that foreign rule impacted the town's population only to a very limited degree at the genetic level".
There was no consensus whatsoever for the undue weight given to a non-peer reviewed article, and its inclusion itself came only from the fact that it was seen as making the 2017 study more relevant to the controversy, but that job is no longer needed since there is a much better reliable source that links the study directly to the controversy and can be used instead. MohamedTalk 11:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

@wdford response to the bullets above:

  • The 2017 study introduces the topic of significant and substantial Greek immigration and Roman settlement in Abusir el-Meleq. Therefore, it is not SYNTH or Original research. It's a summary of what the 2017 study authors said in their paragraph about Greek immigration and Roman settlement. That summary prevented me from having to excerpt the entire quote from the 2017 study, where they admit that ALL of their samples came from an area that was known to have had significant Greek and Roman immigration/settlement and fully 51% of their viable samples were from the period when the Greeks and Romans actually controlled the country.
  • You certainly did not seek consensus before adding your rewrite, which is a hypocritical position to take on this article and section of the article. I have consensus to add a rebuttal from mid-August.
  • I have never once stated that the Native African origin theory for M and N was the only theory, or best theory. I have always maintained that the Native African origin for M haplogroup competes with and is an alternate theory to the Eurasian backflow theory. This is exactly how discussion of the two theories is structured in the M haplogroup article and I did not add that content to the M haplogroup article. Both theories are presented in the M haplogroup article as two bullets next to each other. Both given equal length/weight/prominence in the article. Both have an entire subsection to provide additional details on both theories. This is an appropriate Wikipedia compliant way of dealing with these competing theories. It's exactly how your sources treat the subject when your sources mention that they cannot rule out an African ancestral M, or indigenous to Northwest Africa proto-U6. Everyone except the Wiki editors can treat the subject fairly and just mention the other theory when highlighting their preferred theory on M, N, U6 origins. This is not settled science, no matter how much your POV pushing would like it to be settled science. If it were settled science, you would see statements like we see for the Out of Africa view (e.g. "the Out of Africa view has gained generalized consensus). There would be forceful language saying that the Eurasian backflow theory is the only remaining theory with support in the academic community. We don't see that, as in the M haplogroup Wiki article. We see the two theories presented as alternate explanations for the origins of these haplogroups.
  • The Cleopatra example shows that your understanding of WP:Undue expands for your edits and contracts for the edits of others. There was a quote from a secondary source stating that "we don't spend time arguing that Cleopatra was black" and yet Cleopatra had one of the longest sections in the entire article, based on tabloid/non-scholarly arguments about Cleopatra.
  • Disputed M haplogroup claims were introduced by Keita and you tried to justify it away by saying that the 2017 study relied on other types of DNA info, but that only applies to 3 individuals. That leaves 87 of 90 viable individuals studied using mtDNA only for all conclusions drawn in the paper. See the four sources that I've cited repeatedly supporting the "Never left Africa, M haplogroup origin theory", which can easily be found by just reading the M haplogroup wiki article. It's featured quite prominently there, alongside the Eurasian backflow theory, in a balanced and neutral fashion.
  • An article about the history of the AE race controversy, must discuss race (modern construct) to present the theories that were written by people that accepted race. It would be impossible to write this article without discussing race. We have the position of modern scholarship and other balancing statements to remind readers that the concept of race is no longer supported, but that doesn't mean that the concept of race wasn't supported when all of these theories/books/papers were written. That would be a rewrite of history. Race was most definitely supported during the vast majority of the AE race controversy timeline.

@Memelord0 the study also provides the following extensive account of Greek and Roman settlement in the area from which they obtained their samples, "Abusir el-Meleq's proximity to, and close ties with, the Fayum are significant in the context of this study as the Fayum in particular saw a substantial growth in its population during the first hundred years of Ptolemaic rule, presumably as a result of Greek immigration33,43. Later, in the Roman Period, many veterans of the Roman army—who, initially at least, were not Egyptian but people from disparate cultural backgrounds—settled in the Fayum area after the completion of their service, and formed social relations and intermarried with local populations44. Importantly, there is evidence for foreign influence at Abusir el-Meleq. Individuals with Greek, Latin and Hebrew names are known to have lived at the site and several coffins found at the cemetery used Greek portrait image and adapted Greek statue types to suit ‘Egyptian' burial practices2,45. The site's first excavator, Otto Rubensohn, also found a Greek grave inscription in stone as well as a writing board inscribed in Greek46. Taken together with the multitude of Greek papyri that were written at the site, this evidence strongly suggests that at least some inhabitants of Abusir el-Meleq were literate in, and able to speak, Greek."[8]. None of the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews mentioned in the excerpt are indigenous to the Nile ValleyEditorfromMars (talk) 13:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Some additional detail on U6 and M haplogroups, as they are the basis of any Eurasian backflow papers, theory, and the 2017 DNA study's classification system that lists the individuals as Asian. From Pennarun: "The use of a different method (e.g. using only the synonymous mutations rather than all the mutations present in the mtDNA coding region; see [33]) for estimating molecular coalescent ages gives younger results than previously published [27–29] for both haplogroups with the coalescence of U6 at ~35 KYA and M1 at ~29 KYA. U6 is mostly prevalent in Northwest Africa (Additional file 4 and Additional file 5), a similar occurrence for M1b, which contrasts with M1a, the most diverse sub-clade of M1, for which most of its sub-clades are prevalent in East Africa. Both M1b and M1a have close coalescent ages around the LGM: ~20 and ~21 KYA respectively. M1a1 is the most diverse clade of M1a and is found in virtually all the populations where M1 has been sampled (except in Guinea-Bissau). Again, a variety of its sub-clades are more frequent in East Africa and, interestingly, a large subset of M1a1 samples could not be ascribed to any of its known sub-clades (Additional file 3). It is noteworthy to point out that all the Caucasian samples fall into just one sub-clade, M1a1b2, with no variation present at the intermediate level of resolution (Additional file 3), signature of a likely founder effect."[9]

  • To be clear, Caucasians do not have the same M1 clade as Egyptians. The only Egyptian M haplogroup subclade mentioned in the Wiki M article is M33a2, while all the Caucasian samples fall into just one sub-clade, M1a1b2.
  • The Pennarun journal article states, "A Southwest Asian origin has been proposed for U6 and M1 [27–29]. Yet, this claim remains speculative unless some novel “earlier” Southwest Asian-specific clades, distinct from the known haplogroups, are found in which the described so far M1 and U6 lineages are nested...Unfortunately, the sampling of extant populations of Africa and West Asia may not solve the question of their origin."
  • "However, when considering M1 and U6 as a whole, or U6 alone, no correlation with language (and geography) was found with the current data, indicating for U6 that its expansion was not concomitant with that of the Afro Asiatic languages."
  • "A mimicry between U6 and M1 has been suggested [28, 29]. Both are likely derived from a non-African ancestral clade at a similar time depth and both are largely confined to North and East Africa and the Middle East in their present-day geographic distribution. It seems, however, that the mimicry breaks down when analysing in further detail the coalescent times and frequency patterns of their sub-clades. Even at the general level, U6 is hardly found outside Northwest Africa, whilst M1 is ubiquitous throughout North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, reaching also northern Caucasus. The coalescent age for U6a is almost 10 000 years older than that for either M1a or M1b,"
  • Pennarun conclusions: "Our analyses do not support the model according to which mtDNA haplogroups M1 and U6 represent an early dispersal event of anatomically modern humans at around 40–45 KYA in association with the spread of Dabban industry in North Africa as proposed earlier [28, 29]. A West Asian origin for these haplogroups still remains a viable hypothesis as sister clades of U (and ancestral to it, macro-hg N (including R)) and M are spread overwhelmingly outside Africa, notably in Eurasia, even though the phylogeographic data on extant populations do not present a clear support for it. Our estimates of coalescent times and demographic analyses of U6 and M1 variations suggest that their spread in North and East Africa is largely due to a number of demographic events, predominantly occurring at the end of the peak of as well as after the LGM, but largely before the Holocene. Hence, some of the topologically earliest sub-clades of U6 and M1 may have been involved in the origin and spread of the essentially North African Iberomaurusian culture, and the observed correlations with languages make it likely that the North and East African carriers of the two matrilineages have been absorbed into the expanding Afro-Asiatic languages-speaking people in the area, but in phylogeographically differential ways.
  • More evidence of the lack of consensus in the academic community on this topic.EditorfromMars (talk) 16:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  •  Comment: We're not here to discuss the content of the reliable 2017 study based on our non-scholarly views, so all your "rebuttals" here are worthless. The greek and Roman immigartion to the Fayum area didn't affect the town from where the mummies were taken at the genetic level as the study literally says, so it doesn't matter, and trying to make it seem otherwise is only to misguide the reader and distort what the source says by cherrypicking. The policy literally says "do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source"
The fact that "The current position of modern scholarship is that the Ancient Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development" has no buisness being here, because neither the 2017 study nor the other study discussed that fact, and putting it with some other irrelevant data that has no relation to the controversy like "Other authors propose that M haplogroup is native to East Africa and descended from the Africa only L3 group before the Out of Africa event" is a clear case of WP:SYNTH. Again, the undue weight given to the non peer-reviewed study was not agreed on, nor was the last version you added unilaterally. MohamedTalk 04:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
There are multiple reliable sources that counter every point Keita said, but they aren't added in the article, just like sources that support some of his claims shouldn't be added, because that would be original research and the article won't be about Ancient Egyptian race controversy anymore. MohamedTalk 07:27, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
The whole Keita 'study' is only a Preprint, which means it precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. S.O.Y Keita is described as an Afrocentric scholar or "sympathetic to Afrocentric ideas" by both his supporters and mainstream scholars.[10][11][12] This needs to be added to the context of the article for neutral point of view. In-text attribution is always used in these cases MohamedTalk 08:19, 11 September 2020 (UTC)


Ample sources have stated that the population was not changed when the Greeks and Romans took control of the country. The attempt to pretend that half of the 2017 sample were non-Egyptian is thus false and mendacious.
You certainly DID NOT seek consensus before adding your rebuttal in the first place, as my diffs clearly indicate. If you believe your wording ever achieved consensus, please show us where in the talk page that happened? Until you provide that evidence, we maintain that your claims to have had consensus are false.
Appropriate weight is not automatically equal weight. Strictly speaking, all of Diop's theories are fringe and highly WP:UNDUE.
I know there was a quote stating "we don't spend time arguing that Cleopatra was black". On the other hand, other Afrocentrists DO argue that Cleopatra was black. That particular source was thus WRONG, and probably should be considered to be unreliable.
Re your "four sources" – some of those links go to a huge document, which includes papers written by students etc. In such cases it is proper to provide page numbers where the cited info can be found – please provide those page numbers.
Wiki-articles cannot be used as sources for other articles. The M haplogroup wiki article seemingly needs to be improved and updated.
To be clear, when Pennarun et al speak of "Caucasians" in this paper, they are talking about people who live in the part of the world known as The Caucasus – ie modern Georgia etc on the Black Sea. They are NOT using the term as it is used to define a racial category, so their usage differs completely from the usage of Morton and Gliddon etc.
Pennarun do say that the Southwest Asian origin claim "for U6 and M1" remains speculative, but they did not say that the conclusions of all the many other specialist scientists was incorrect, and they did not say that the Eurasian backflow didn't happen. Once again, you are applying a lot of SYNTH here. Pennarun also concluded that a West Asian origin for these haplogroups "still remains a viable hypothesis as sister clades of U (and ancestral to it, macro-hg N (including R)) and M are spread overwhelmingly outside Africa, notably in Eurasia, even though the phylogeographic data on extant populations do not present a clear support for it." Considering how many scientists were confident of their conclusions in favour of the Eurasian backflow, and indeed for the Southwest Asian origin claim "for U6 and M1" as well, we need to consider the due weight here.
The actual conclusion of the Pennarun paper was that the dispersal could not have happened at around 40–45 KYA, not that the dispersals never happened at all. They concluded that the dispersal happened between the Last Glacial Maximum ~21 KYA and the Holocene ~11 KYA, i.e. well before the Dynastic period began. These back-flow Asians had been part of the "indigenous" population for thousands for years before the Dynastic period got started.
Other points from the Pennarun paper, which you forgot to mention, include the following:
  • The North African mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic pool has been shown to reflect influence from different regions, with sizeable portions of lineages from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and others that diversified perhaps first in Europe, a pattern also shown with autosomal data.
  • Some earlier studies assumed that M1 diverged from other M lineages prior to the early dispersals of Homo sapiens out of Africa ~60–70 KYA. However, most research that has followed explains its presence in Africa by a back-migration from Asia. NB WEIGHT.
  • A mimicry between U6 and M1 has been suggested. Both are likely derived from a non-African ancestral clade at a similar time depth and both are largely confined to North and East Africa and the Middle East in their present-day geographic distribution. NB WEIGHT
To help you get over your obsession with the M haplogroup, here are some papers that focused instead on Y-chromosomes:
* Kujanová et al; 2009 [11]; "gene pools of a demographically small but autochthonous population from the Egyptian Western Desert oasis el-Hayez … we still found clear genetic evidence of a strong Near Eastern input that can be dated into the Neolithic. This is revealed by high frequencies and high internal variability of several mtDNA lineages from haplogroup T. …. Similarly, the Y-chromosome gene pool reveals high frequencies of the Near Eastern J1 and the North African E1b1b1b lineages, both generally known to have expanded within North Africa during the Neolithic."
* Cruciani et al; 2002 [12]; "A back migration from Asia to sub-Saharan Africa is supported by high-resolution analysis of human Y-chromosome haplotypes."
* Lucotte & Mercier; 2003 [13]; "We analyzed Y-chromosome haplotypes in the Nile River Valley in Egypt … in three regions along the river: in Alexandria (the Delta and Lower Egypt), in Upper Egypt, and in Lower Nubia … the three most common being haplotype V (39.4%), haplotype XI (18.9%), and haplotype IV (13.9%). Haplotype V is a characteristic Arab haplotype, with a northern geographic distribution in Egypt in the Nile River Valley. Haplotype IV, characteristic of sub-Saharan populations, shows a southern geographic distribution in Egypt."
* Omran et al; 2007 [14]; "Seventeen Y-STR loci … were typed in a population sample of 208 males from Upper (South) Egypt … Upper Egyptians were found to be most closely affiliated to Middle Eastern populations, Europeans and North Africans".
* Arredi et al; 2004 [15]; "Thus, we propose that the Neolithic transition in this part of the world was accompanied by demic diffusion of Afro-Asiatic–speaking pastoralists from the Middle East."
Wdford (talk) 20:02, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

@Memelord0 a response to your points:

  • The article mentions non-Nile valley origins for the AE mummies in the following instances. Therefore, I forcefully disagree with your assertion that the position of mainstream scholarship regarding the indigenous Nile valley development of AE civilization is not needed for balance. The Near East, Levant, Middle East are not the Nile valley.
    • "Egyptian mummies has shown a high level of affinity with the DNA of the populations of the Near East.[46][47]"
    • "Of these three, the Y-chromosome haplogroups of two individuals could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J"
    • "these ancient Egyptian mummies shows that the connection is strongest with ancient populations from the Levant, the Near East and Anatolia, and to a lesser extent modern populations from the Near East and the Levant.[47]"
  • Wiki rules instruct us to not debate Afrocentrism vs Eurocentrism in this article. Why do you keep violating the rules by bringing this up? Obviously, I could go to numerous books and get quotes about Eurocentrists and racists, but that would be violating the policy. I could quote their racist writings that would make modern day people cringe, but I won't unless moderators fail to act on this repeated rule violation and open the article up to discussions of afrocentrism vs eurocentrism. Follow the rules.
  • @wdford explicitly asked for additional sources to be added to justify the inclusion of the "M haplogroup is native to East Africa theory." Similarly, he provided numerous examples to justify/support the Eurasian backflow theory. The inclusion of these "Native to Africa theory" sources is the result of an attempt at compromise by multiple editors. See above.

@wdford a response to some of your points:

  • In the spirit of compromise, I have not tried to reintroduce the Greek and Roman settlement/immigration content since you deleted it. I think you can see that in the edit history. However, the 2017 study does indeed highlight the greater likelihood of Greek only and Roman only marriages and the higher likelihood of Greek/Roman ethnicity in upper classes:
    • Our genetic time transect suggests genetic continuity between the Pre-Ptolemaic, Ptolemaic and Roman populations of Abusir el-Meleq, indicating that foreign rule impacted the town's population only to a very limited degree at the genetic level. It is possible that the genetic impact of Greek and Roman immigration was more pronounced in the north-western Delta and the Fayum, where most Greek and Roman settlement concentrated43,55, or among the higher classes of Egyptian society55. Under Ptolemaic and Roman rule, ethnic descent was crucial to belonging to an elite group and afforded a privileged position in society55. Especially in the Roman Period there may have been significant legal and social incentives to marry within one's ethnic group, as individuals with Roman citizenship had to marry other Roman citizens to pass on their citizenship. Such policies are likely to have affected the intermarriage of Romans and non-Romans to a degree55. Additional genetic studies on ancient human remains from Egypt are needed with extensive geographical, social and chronological spread in order to expand our current picture in variety, accuracy and detail. I think you're ignoring the considerable attention paid by the 2017 authors in their study to the possibility of many of their samples from the Greek and Roman period being ethnically Greek or Roman.
  • The main point that I will not relent on is the idea that authors can classify any specimen with M haplogroup as "Asian" or "from Asia." That's a theory and that theory has alternate theories (M haplogroup is native to East Africa and never left). You can find the alternate theory literally anywhere you look for it.
  • I have never once said that the M haplogroup is native to east africa is the only theory, or best theory. I have simply said that it is a competing theory with the Eurasian backflow theory and that the Eurasian backflow theory does not have enough consensus in the academic community that it can be mentioned without adding balance by mentioning the alternate theory. My sources (Pennarun) and your sources are balanced and never fail to make this distinction. For example:
    • In the 2017 study we find the following statement, "While this result by itself does not exclude the possibility of much older and continuous gene flow from African sources, the substantially lower African component in our ∼2,000-year-old ancient samples suggests that African gene flow in modern Egyptians occurred indeed predominantly within the last 2,000 years." As usual, the 2017 study does not rule out the possibility of African ancestry for the genetic material involved. Unlike Wiki editors, scholars always mention that Egyptian genetic material could be from Eurasian backflow, or could be native to Africa. This whole section of the 2017 study is only based on n=3 samples. It's pretty meaningless, but since it has a paragraph in this AE article, I've highlighted it.
  • Somewhere in this wall of text, it was asked when did the 2017 study mention M haplogroup and why are Keita et. al discussing M haplogroup. The 2017 study shows M haplogroup for its classification system in Figures 3a and 3b of the 2017 study.
  • This is how the M1/M subject is treated in a fair and balanced way in the Wiki M haplogroup article (I did NOT write this): "Much discussion concerning the origins of haplogroup M has been related to its subclade haplogroup M1, which is the only variant of macro-haplogroup M found in Africa.[7] Two possibilities were being considered as potential explanations for the presence of M1 in Africa:
  1. M was present in the ancient population which later gave rise to both M1 in Africa, and M more generally found in Eurasia.[8]
  2. The presence of M1 in Africa is the result of a back-migration from Asia which occurred sometime after the Out of Africa migration.[9]"
  • Supporting the Native to Africa theory, additional detail is provided (I did not write this or find it on the internet, it was already in the Wiki article):
    • "Thus, in the context of the out-of-Africa model, the following scenario can be envisaged: haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and was carried toward Asia. This agrees with the proposed date of an out-of Africa expansion approximately 65,000 years ago. After its arrival in Asia, the haplogroup M founder group went through a demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining M haplogroup in eastern Africa did not spread, but remained localized up to approximately 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which it started to expand. Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario, and in particular, other nuclear and mtDNA markers indicate eastern Africa as the origin of both African and Eurasian expansions."
  • The entire point of the Caucasian theory is that all groups now considered Caucasian had a common origin and waves of migration from the Caucasus region gave rise to peoples currently classified as Caucasian. So one would expect similar genetic profiles in these "Caucasian" people, which actually doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.
  • Finally, we're supposed to be discussing edits to the article on the Talk page, not our own interests. The 2017 study relies on mtDNA (e.g. M1) data for 87 of 90 samples. Let's not create a new wall of text about Y chromosomes, as that's not the crux of the 2017 study. My previous comments already spoke to Y chromosome, "Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario." I probably won't respond to additional Y chromosome comments unless you can demonstrate the 2017 study relies on Y chromosome results for more than n=3 samples.EditorfromMars (talk) 17:19, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


Once again, the phrase "indigenous development" DOES NOT MEAN "developed by black people", it means "developed by the people who were living there at the time." Since the sources are all saying that the Asian back-flow happened more than 6,000 years before the Dynastic period, those Asian descendants were also thoroughly indigenous by the time of the Dynastic period. Open you mind.
Once again, we ARE NOT debating "Afrocentrism vs Eurocentrism" in this article, we are reporting mainstream scholarship, as well as the various discredited non-mainstream views, current and past. Afrocentrism holds a different (fringe) view to mainstream scholarship, but there is no "debate" as such.
The 2017 study NEVER mentioned the M haplogroup. It gets a scant appearance in a table, merged among many other types, with no reference or discussion. Keita, a non-specialist and a prominent Afrocentrist, writing in a non-peer-reviewed paper, makes the statement that "The authors define all mitochondrial M1 haplogroups as "Asian" which is problematic." The authors made no such statement. This greatly diminishes the reliability we can attach to the Keita paper, which affects its appropriate weight. You then added some more material "rebutting" the Eurasian back-flow position, even though the Eurasian back-flow position has not been mentioned in the article. This is also seriously non-neutral as well as WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE. We can fix this by deleting it, or we can add the Eurasian back-flow position properly, and then run your comment, with appropriate weight.
I also pointed out that some of your sources do not actually say what you claim they say, and some of them seemingly say nothing at all on the topic. That also needs to be corrected before this material can hope to achieve consensus. I am therefor deleting it until we agree on the wording, ON TALK. Don't edit war, DISCUSS.
Your long importation about Greeks and Romans actually supports our point – quote "impacted the town's population only to a very limited degree at the genetic level", and "there may have been significant legal and social incentives to marry within one's ethnic group". Nowhere do they even suggest that the mummies were not Egyptian. This is again your own WP:OR and WP:SYNTH.
The "native to East Africa theory" deserves to be mentioned in a debate about M Haplogroups, which this article does not yet include. However your own sources make it clear that this is a minority theory – it is by no means considered to be an equal theory by the mainstream scientists.
No proper scientist will ever use words like "definite" or "incontrovertible" when discussing something that happened more than 11,000 years ago – that would be unscientific. Only Afrocentrists etc speak so definitively about things that cannot be definitive. However this does not mean that all theories get accorded equal weight – far from it.
Your quote from Quintana is also seriously misleading. They did use interesting terms like "scenario" and "envisaged", rather than "this is a solid theory". There is a reason for these scientific euphemisms. However you then added a sentence about "Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario". This sentence actually occurs much further down the page, and actually refers to the uncontested initial expansion out of Africa 60kya - 100kya – it is NOT referring to the hypothetical "envisaged scenario" of 10kya - 20kya. See [16] – bottom-right of page 439. That was naughty.
Once again, the entire point of the Caucasian theory is NOT that all groups now considered Caucasian had a common origin and migrated from the Caucasus region – that is merely your own refusal to accept facts. As is explained in detail in the Caucasian race article, the Caucasian theory encompassed all populations which were neither Mongoloid nor Negroid, and it included people from Europe, India, the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt. If you would embrace reality, it would all be so much easier to understand.
There are many studies which make the point that Y-chromosomes indicate substantial Asian back-flow into North Africa. I will add them in due course.
Wdford (talk) 23:45, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
  • The genetic affinity between ancient and modern Egyptians with the rest of the near east has nothing to do with Ancient Egyptian civilization being indigenous or not. A part of Egypt is literally in Asia, and Egypt is a part of the Near East and the Middle east, it's silly to assume there haven't been immigrations and population movements thousands of years before the emergence of Egyptian civilization and during the dynastic period. As I and Wdford mentioned many times it means that the civilization was "developed by the people who were living there at the time." Since the sources are all saying that the Asian back-flow happened thousands of years before the Dynastic period, those Asian descendants were also thoroughly indigenous by the time of the Dynastic period. Also, the 2017 study didn't directly talk about that subject, to imply that they were not indigenous based on your misunderstanding of the source is another distortion.
You're the one engaging in multiple edit wars with multiple editors here and in Black Egyptian hypothesis article. It's weird to want to keep your not-agreed-on version citing the talk page even though ZERO editors here agree on it.
I agree with Wdford on the Keita preprint and the undue weight that was given to M haplogroup and irrelevant points by EDitorfromMars. MohamedTalk 08:12, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
@wdford
  • Not falling for the race/black distraction. This entire discussion is about genetics (mtDNA, M/N/U6 haplogroups, etc.). We can discuss the black theory when talking about edits to the black theory section.
  • Getting back to the point, indigenous means from that area for some considerably long period of time that your previous location is no longer relevant (e.g. Native Americans moving from Asia to the Americas via an ice bridge). The African dispersal scenario in fact does satisfy that definition, as it has East Africans dispersing M haplogroup 10-20,000 years ago, which would satisfy mainstream scholarship's position that AE civilization is indigenous to the Nile valley. This has nothing to do with black, or race. That's your failed attempt at a distraction.
  • @Memelord0 is in fact repeatedly introducing Afrocentrism into the discussion and editors are in fact repeatedly introducing Afrocentrism into the article. Any objective person can CTRL+F the article and see that Afrocentrism is mentioned 6 times, while Eurocentrism is only mentioned once, so you are in fact violating the ban on discussion of Afrocentrism, as you could just as easily substitute a word like "author, or professor." @wdford literally continues to use the word Afrocentrist on the Talk page, while claiming that he is not using it. If you want to use a word other than their name to refer to ppl with a phD, you might want to try DOCTOR or Author. It doesn't matter if secondary sources use the word, as the header/instructions at the top of the edit window tell us to refrain from discussing it. I think I will just seek assistance for this repeated rules violation, or else this article will devolve into a series of Eurocentrist vs Afrocentrist points. Trust me, there are no shortage of phDs highlighting the virulent racism of Eurocentric Egyptologists over the last 150+ years.
  • I disagree with your commentary on Greek and Roman immigration/settlement. The authors are clearly highlighting that readers should take caution with the data, due to the presence of considerable Greeks and Romans in the sample area. It's not important, because that's not my primary concern in this section. Everyone knows that Greeks and Romans are not indigenous to the Nile Valley and are NOT Ancient Egyptians. It's so straightforward that even a lay reader can't be fooled by that non-sense in an article that's supposed to be about the race controversy of Ancient EGYPTIANS.
  • The 2017 study only has n=3 y chromosome data, so it's not relevant to the edit that we're discussing.
  • Some of these sources don't have page numbers.
  • I still support arbitration, because I don't think you can be objective on topic and realize that the two theories are mentioned in the M haplogroup article and it's not controversial. The only reason that it's controversial here is that it doesn't support your Out of Arabia POV for the AE civilization.
  • The Caucasian theory is foolishness. Any theory that groups a blonde, blue eyed Scandinavian with Saddam Hussein is non-sense. Especially when they've never lived in the same region, don't share the same religious background, or language, or continent, or phenotype. They basically have nothing in common and yet, George Gliddon (1844) wrote: "Asiatic in their origin .... the Egyptians were white men, of no darker hue than a pure Arab, a Jew, or a Phoenician."[226]
@Memelord0
  • Near East, Middle East, etc. are anachronistic to the study of Ancient Egypt. The terms/constructs did not exist during the Ancient Egyptian civilization. They are modern creations. This is not the population article of Egypt. It's the history of the ANCIENT Egyptian race controversy article.
  • Egypt is firmly on Africa's tectonic plate and firmly on the continent of Africa. Abydos, Hierkonpolis, Memphis, Thebes, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Jebel Barkal, Saqqara, Amarna, and any other site that has ever mattered in Ancient Egyptian civilization is firmly inside of continental Africa. Controverting basic facts doesn't help your case.
  • There is a competing theory of how M/M1 genetic material arrived in Egypt. Eurasian backflow theory is one theory. Native African dispersal from East Africa is another theory. @wdford posted sources supporting Eurasian backflow. I posted sources supporting Native East African dispersal. The M haplogroup article clearly outlines both theories in a fair and balanced way. See above.EditorfromMars (talk) 16:18, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@wdford, per request page numbers or sections to point other editors to the content supporting the Native to Africa theory:

  • Copied from Amy Non source, " Gonzalez et al. (2007) and Olivieri et al. (2006) both assume...M1 in Eastern Africa and Yemen are a result of a back migration of M lineages from India. However, as M1 lineages are completely absent from India, and the coalescence dates are based on very few full genome sequences, it is still likely that the Yemeni M1 lineages could have entered Yemen directly from Eastern Africa
  • Copied from Kivisild discussion section: "All non-Africans, including Indian populations, have inherited a subset of African mtDNA haplogroup L3 lineages, differentiated into groups M and N. Although the frequency of haplogroup M and its diversity are highest in India (Majumder 2001; Edwin et al. 2002), there is no phylogenetic evidence yet from the mtDNA coding region demonstrating that its presence in Africa is due to a back migration"
  • Quintana, per previous Talk page discussion: "Thus, in the context of the out-of-Africa model, the following scenario can be envisaged: haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and was carried toward Asia. This agrees with the proposed date of an out-of Africa expansion approximately 65,000 years ago. After its arrival in Asia, the haplogroup M founder group went through a demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining M haplogroup in eastern Africa did not spread, but remained localized up to approximately 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which it started to expand. Y-chromosome and chromosome-21 markers also support the African dispersal scenario, and in particular, other nuclear and mtDNA markers indicate eastern Africa as the origin of both African and Eurasian expansions."
  • We just discussed Pennarun above:
    • The Pennarun journal article states, "A Southwest Asian origin has been proposed for U6 and M1 [27–29]. Yet, this claim remains speculative unless some novel “earlier” Southwest Asian-specific clades, distinct from the known haplogroups, are found in which the described so far M1 and U6 lineages are nested...Unfortunately, the sampling of extant populations of Africa and West Asia may not solve the question of their origin."
  • "However, when considering M1 and U6 as a whole, or U6 alone, no correlation with language (and geography) was found with the current data, indicating for that its expansion was not concomitant with that of the Afro Asiatic languages."
  • "A mimicry between U6 and M1 has been suggested [28, 29]. Both are likely derived from a non-African ancestral clade at a similar time depth and both are largely confined to North and East Africa and the Middle East in their present-day geographic distribution. It seems, however, that the mimicry breaks down when analysing in further detail the coalescent times and frequency patterns of their sub-clades. Even at the general level, U6 is hardly found outside Northwest Africa, whilst M1 is ubiquitous throughout North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, reaching also northern Caucasus. The coalescent age for U6a is almost 10 000 years older than that for either M1a or M1b,"
  • Pennarun conclusions: "Our analyses do not support the model according to which mtDNA haplogroups M1 and U6 represent an early dispersal event of anatomically modern humans at around 40–45 KYA in association with the spread of Dabban industry in North Africa as proposed earlier [28, 29]. A West Asian origin for these haplogroups still remains a viable hypothesis as sister clades of U (and ancestral to it, macro-hg N (including R)) and M are spread overwhelmingly outside Africa, notably in Eurasia, even though the phylogeographic data on extant populations do not present a clear support for it.EditorfromMars (talk) 17:19, 13 September 2020 (UTC)


I suggest reviewing Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Explanation_of_the_neutral_point_of_view
  • Achieving neutrality and NPOV is non-negotiable. The assertion that the Eurasian backflow theory is the ONLY theory does not satisfy NPOV.
  • Stating seriously contested assertions as facts is not allowed
  • Copied from Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Explanation_of_the_neutral_point_of_view As a general rule, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely on the grounds that it seems biased. Instead, try to rewrite the passage or section to achieve a more neutral tone. Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process. Remove material only where you have a good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage. The sections below offer specific guidance on common problems.
  • Review the treatment of the M1 haplogroup topic in the Haplogroup_M_(mtDNA) article, versus this AE race controversy article. You will see that the treatment in AE race controversy does not satisfy NPOVEditorfromMars (talk) 17:41, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Here's the entire Quintana quote as a contiguous block of text. No breaks. No interruptions. It's pretty clear:

"Thus, in the context of the out-of-Africa model, the following scenario can be envisaged: haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and was carried toward Asia. This agrees with the proposed date of an out-of Africa expansion approximately 65,000 years ago. After its arrival in Asia, the haplogroup M founder group went through a demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining M haplogroup in eastern Africa did not spread, but remained localized up to approximately 10,000–20,000 years ago, after which it started to expand."


You are STILL refusing to seek consensus before making contentious edits.
You are also really scraping the bottom of the barrel here – fishing for isolated sentences in off-topic papers to back up your POV.
  • Quintana did not rule out the Eurasian back-flow position, they merely stated that it is possible to "envisage" a "Scenario" where M1 MIGHT have POSSIBLY developed and been retained in Africa and POSSIBLY spread out from there – no evidence of this spread exists or was presented. They made no denial of the Eurasian back-flow position.
  • Kivisild's entire paper is actually about India. It also suggests IN PASSING that M-haplogroup MIGHT have POSSIBLY developed in Africa, and POSSIBLY have been carried out during the Out of Africa expansion. They made no denial of the Eurasian back-flow position, but mentioned that there is no evidence of a backflow from INDIA.
  • Amy Non – a student writing a dissertation paper - was writing about evolutionary history in the context of complex disease. She was considering countries other than Egypt, and she made no denial of Eurasian back-flow.
  • Pennarun do say that the Southwest Asian origin claim for M1 and U6 "remains speculative", but they did not say that the conclusions of all the many other specialist scientists about Eurasian back-flow were incorrect. In fact they actually concluded that a West Asian origin for these haplogroups "remains a viable hypothesis".
If we are going to mention the M1 "controversy" at all, then it needs to be done properly, with DUE WEIGHT. Since you absolutely refuse to seek consensus on talk first, I will make the necessary edits myself. Note that neither M1 nor any related "controversy" was discussed in the 2017 paper, so this needs to be a separate paragraph.
It's interesting that you ARE however happy to group blonde, blue-eyed Scandinavians with white Greeks and white Spaniards etc – who DO look exactly like Saddam Hussein, even though they have since developed different languages, and who actually DO have a huge amount in common with him. They are the same "race", and those old populations moved around a lot, as we all know – Europe was originally populated via the Middle East. They did also once have wide-spread Islam in Spain and Greece, before the modern nations came into being, and Iraq itself wasn't always an Islamic country. Gliddon etc readily accepted Arabs etc as being Caucasian rather than Negroid. Few modern Arabs consider themselves to be black. Wdford (talk) 08:31, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

@wdford I'm not sure why you aren't catching this in the wall of text, but I'll say it again:

  • I did not create these Native to Africa theory edits for M haplogroup. The discussion of alternate M haplogroup origin theories was already in the Wiki M haplogroup article. I simply copy/pasted the non-controversial M haplogroup origin theories from the M haplogroup article into the AE race controversy article. The sources that you claim I found were already in the M haplogroup article and I only copy/pasted them into this article.
  • The only source that I actively found myself is the Pennarun source. All others (including Quintana) were added to the M haplogroup article by other editors. Please direct your concerns about these sources to whichever editor added them to the M haplogroup Wiki article.
  • I don't agree with your assertion that a paper must only cover one topic to be relevant and that the paper can't speak to multiple issues in the course of their paper. Most of the sources in this article are books and those books cover numerous topics, some in more detail than others. If a paper is about India, but quite clearly states a position on competing theories for M haplogroup origin, then it's relevant. I also think you failed to read the paper, as I did, because you would realize that the paper actually tried to prove that Eurasian backflow would have been from India and not Arabia. The paper mentioned that people from East India would have been just passing through Arabia on their way back to Africa. Therefore, the paper on India actually discusses both the Eurasian backflow theory in detail and covers the Native to Africa M haplogroup theory. It's a highly relevant paper to M haplogroup origin discussions. For emphasis, I did not find the Kivisild paper, some other editor added it to the M haplogroup Wiki article in a non-controversial fashion.
  • Finally, I provided numerous examples from your sources where they explicitly state that they can't rule out an African origin for Proto-U6 and ancestral M and N. It seems to me that all authors and Wiki editors (including the person(s) that added this content to the M haplogroup article) can be fair and balanced about this topic and admit that there are competing theories for M/N/U6 origins, except you.
  • I support your recent edit and publicly thanked you. After today's addition of links to relevant Wiki articles and completion of the Native theory thought, I don't plan to edit this sentence/section further, unless something changes.
  • I did not create the modern construct of race, in all of its stupidity. I agree with modern science that race is unscientific. However, this article is about a race controversy history, so we're forced to talk about race in order to maintain this article. Europeans created this racial classification system and they grouped themselves with Greeks, likely so that they could claim the glories of Greek history. Islam did not exist during AE times, as AE did not exist in 700 AD/CE when Islam took root. Moors invading the Iberian peninsula form ~700-1400 AD/CE is anachronistic to a discussion of Ancient Egyptians. There was no such place as Iraq during AE. Please stay on topic.EditorfromMars (talk) 14:24, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
I grouped Keita statements about genetics together. I did not add more content to the 2017 study rebuttal. I only moved an existing Keita statement from one part of the article to another, to group similar thoughts. I don't want you guys to see this extra text and think that I expanded the rebuttal with new content to the article.EditorfromMars (talk) 16:49, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
As we have told you many times, you cannot use other articles as your source – they may themselves be inaccurate or out of date. See here [17]
The scientific sources would never "rule out" anything, because that would be unscientific. However they were very clear about where the evidence was pointing, and they didn't suggest for a moment that the two theories were equal competitors. However you failed to mention that too. There is a clear pattern to your edits.
You raised the example of Saddam Hussein, not us.
You are now trying to use a 2008 general statement from Keita to comment on a 2017 scientific study. That is WP:SYNTH. Its better to leave that where it is. Wdford (talk) 21:44, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Undue weight for 3 mummy/individual genetic data

In the Near Eastern affinities section, you will find the following content: Genome-wide data could only be successfully extracted from three of these individuals. Of these three, the Y-chromosome haplogroups of two individuals could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J, and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa. The absolute estimates of sub-Saharan African ancestry in these three individuals ranged from 6 to 15%, which is significantly lower than the level of sub-Saharan African ancestry in the modern Egyptians from Abusir el-Meleq, who "range from 14 to 21%." The study's authors cautioned that the mummies may be unrepresentative of the Ancient Egyptian population as a whole.[49]

  • This paragraph violates undue by giving too much importance to results based on only 3 mummies/individuals. The rest of the paper is more appropriate, as it uses 87 viable individuals to draw conclusions.
  • Copied from Undue, "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements."
  • The depth of detail, quantity of text, and implications on AE race/genetic discussions from 3 mummies is too significant for inclusion at all and especially with this much detail.
  • According to Keita et al, "The whole genome sample size is too small (n=3) to accurately permit a discussion of all Egyptian population history from north to south"EditorfromMars (talk) 15:50, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't think you understand what undue weight means. The authors built much of their conclusions based on these mummies, it doesn't matter if you think they are too few. This exact part about the Sub-saharan ancestry in Ancient vs modern Egyptians is the most important point of the study and the one that got most coverage in the media. So, there's no undue weight. I personally think they make big conclusions based on one area, but my opinion or yours don't matter. The study's authors cautioned that the mummies may be unrepresentative of the Ancient Egyptian population as a whole, also the Stephen Quirke criticism is mainly about this part. MohamedTalk 04:44, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
I clearly copied the text from the Undue weight article, so there can be no doubt what I mean. From the text:
  • but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. The 3 mummies are not significant enough to the 2017 study findings or the position of modern scholarship regarding the AE race controversy (significant to the subject). The sample size is too small, as noted by Keita. The majority of conclusions drawn by the 2017 study were drawn from the 87 other mummies that they tested.
  • quantity of text The discussion of the 3 mummies constitutes the better part of a paragraph, which is a lot of 'quantity of text' considering rebuttals of the ENTIRE 2017 STUDY are being limited to one paragraph in this article.
Clearly, I know exactly what I mean and am saying, it's your ability to comprehend it that is the problem.EditorfromMars (talk) 15:39, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

From the 2017 source, "The study's authors cautioned that the mummies may be unrepresentative of the Ancient Egyptian population as a whole.[13]"

  • If even the 2017 study authors are cautioning readers about drawing conclusions from the 3 mummies (unrepresentative of AE), why do the 3 mummies deserve nearly a paragraph in this article? That's undue (significance, quantity of text)EditorfromMars (talk) 15:57, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
  • You're not making the point you think you are. You're only criticizing the fact that they draw conclusions based on small samples, which as I said is a valid criticism talked about by critics in the section and by the authors themselves. However, It has absloutely nothing to do with due weight. The conclusions drawn from these mummies are well represented in the media and reliable sources, and they were drawn using scientific methods and published in a respectable journal. The difference in subsaharan ancestry between modern and ancient people in this area (and Egyptians in general) is arguably the main conclusion of the study itself and the one that got most coverage in other sources. MohamedTalk 07:57, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
I am making the point quite clearly and your attempts to speak on my behalf are unwarranted. The 2017 study's purpose in this article is to outline the position of modern scholarship versus the history of various AE race theories and controversies. The sample size is too small to represent the position of modern scholarship on Ancient Egypt, per Keita, so this n=3 whole genome "aspect" is receiving undue weight and undue quantity of text and needs to be trimmed down to one sentence. The mtDNA "aspect" of the 2017 study does a perfectly good job of getting the reader to the conclusions of the 2017 study.EditorfromMars (talk) 17:49, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
  • You're trying to remove a part of the article that you don't like based on a misunderstanding of the policy. The view that the sample size is small is an opinion not a fact, and it's silly to take the words of a preprint that didn't even go through peer-review and ignore a reliable study that recieved considerable coverage in media and other sources, especially the part that you don't like, which is the main point of the study, and the one on which the majority of conclusions were based. The fact that the majority of crticism in the section is about this part is further proof of its importance and coverage in sources. MohamedTalk 06:45, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
I am trying to condense a part of the article that has too much quantity of text, based on n=3 samples and NPOV guidelines. I'm making the same point that the 2017 study authors and Keita made, which is: Don't read too much into conclusions drawn from n=3 samples from one area in middle/northern Egypt. It would be straightforward to condense those 3 sentences into one and make the same point. The 2017 study is occupying a lot of space in this article.EditorfromMars (talk) 14:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
The 2017 study was the first (and thus far only) study to test ACTUAL mummy DNA using a reliable methodology - that is why it is so notable. All previous attempts used the older PCR methodology, which is highly prone to contamination. The Y-chromosome results are supported by numerous other studies on modern DNA, as per the references that were added to the article in that section. The authors admitted that the samples were limited, but that doesn't make them invalid. Wdford (talk) 21:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
To be absolutely clear, my request is to find a way to say the same thing about the n=3 results with less characters/words/sentences. Condense, combine, reduce. The n=3 results don't need a paragraph. There's plenty of other words/sentences in the 2017 study section explaining the 2017 study's conclusions. Getting into the details of their n=3 methodology is undue for this article. Just state the conclusion, not the journey to reach the n=3 conclusion.EditorfromMars (talk) 21:52, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
  • It's only a misunderstanding of the policy that says that because the data was taken from 3 mummies, which a preprint crticized, then it's not notable enough and doesn't deserve much weight. Due weight is measured by the significance and notability of the info (An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject). As I already said, the difference in Subsaharan ancestry between modern and ancient residents of the area is indeed the main point of the study, and that part is the one on which most of the conclusions were made, and got most coverage in other sources and most of the criticisms from the other 2 sources too. It can't get simpler than that. MohamedTalk 12:20, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Historical theories

The Asiatic race theory section is inappropriately named. The very term "Asiatic race theory" has been linked to the article on the Hamites. This section should be rewritten, and renamed, as the Biblical theory or the Mizraim theory. Much of the material currently in this section actually belongs elsewhere. Any objections or suggestions? Wdford (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

We cover this in the article Mizraim, but I am not certain there is much distinction from the Hamites theory which was also inspired by the Book of Genesis. "According to Genesis 10, Mizraim son of Ham was the younger brother of Cush and elder brother of Phut and Canaan, whose families together made up the Hamite branch of Noah's descendants. Mizraim's sons were Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim (out of whom came Philistim), and Caphtorim." Dimadick (talk) 11:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Requesting assistance please

An editor has created a new account five days ago, and has been using it to push the fringe Black Egyptian hypothesis at the Ahmose-Nefertari article. This editor does not comply with the consensus, or WP:OR, or WP:SYNTH. He insists that mainstream sources and fringe sources should be treated equally. Please would some experienced editors visit the Ahmose-Nefertari article? Wdford (talk) 19:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I am the editor Wdford is referring to. I very strongly encourage anyone read the talk in Ahmose-Nefertari. There has been questionable behaviors displayed by Wdford (also Khruner and A. Parrot) throughout the talk including completely unsolicited insistence on directing the conversation towards the topic of 'race' and 'ethnicity', and efforts to influence one of the cited sources in support of his personal views (please see [18] and [19] for before and after versions of the source in question, both of which have been independently assessed and resulted in closure of a dispute initiated by Khruner, as part of a failed concerted effort to silence other editors).Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 05:49, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Personal attack deleted and editor given a final warning, Doug Weller talk 20:31, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Hello. Your statement makes it unclear who your are referring to. You did threaten to block me after I interpreted the DR/N moderator's words before he closed the dispute initiated by Khruner : "We may also have Wdford manipulating sources to their benefit, which be an admin matter" [20]. Please let me know if you are referring to a final warning given to myself (which I had not been made aware of), and if so what constitutes the personal attack you are referring to. Also, when users on this platform openly observe that an interaction is unpleasant, or intimidating, and appears to reflect bias (which can be defined as prejudice in favor of or against something usually in a way considered to be unfair, which I believe to be the case here, please see below), it seems hardly suitable to me, or conductive to meaningful discussion, to remove their words, frame the claims as personal attacks, and threaten to block them. This seems of great concern to me, especially when the topic at hand concerns skin phenotypes, which has historically been construed as race (a social construct with no biological foundation) and used as a basis for discrimination. Thank you for your consideration. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 20:24, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Please examine the history of the talk page if you want to see what "Personal attack deleted" refers to. Despite the unfortunate appearance of the comments above, it was nothing to do with you. I am an uninvolved administrator who has been watching this page for a long time. I don't think I've done anything significant before but I have been concerned lately that there is far too much commentary here. This part of my comment is not addressed to a particular editor but is a general observation that future discussion should be focused on actionable proposals to improve the article based on policies (reliable source, DUE, etc.). I will block the editor Doug Weller referred to if that problem is repeated, but would like to take this opportunity to ask everyone to stop posting in this section. If someone has an actionable proposal to improve the article, make it in a new section, with sources. Johnuniq (talk) 05:55, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Thank you very much for clarifying. I intend to follow your directions and stop posting in this section. Kind regards. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 07:16, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Doug Weller intervention here may be warranted at the very least to cap the thread before it gets even more "productive", this is an ethnic personal attack (and a dubious one-- Wdford said he is South African, but I can't seem to remember him ever saying he was a member of the white minority there.). Lines like this Apparently Wdford is South African, which would explain his views on blacks, considering their history. But now that they are in power in South Africa does he not fear reprisal if he is discovered? should not be tolerated, imo. Let alone Allanana's views on "Jews in Europe". I'd vote for sanctions immediately, this is not a first time offender. --Calthinus (talk) 20:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
@Calthinus: Hello. I am not involved in the thread you are referring to. I did interact with Wdford. There is content which appears on Wdford's user talk page, authored by a different user, expressing views on WP:NPOV according to which : "The enforcers of wikipedia policy, its administrative class, are unlikely to be a big deal to you, as long as you aren't too clumsy. Admins enforce disciplinary policies, not encyclopedic policies. Yes WP:NPOV is in theory a policy, but they won't have any knowledge of your pet-topics or much interest in them, being primarily a collection of seasoned vandal-fighters and talk-loving, action-shy mandarins. [...] even if some "neutral" has more knowledge than you, you can still make him your bitch. [...] When engaged in a revert-war with this "expert", bombard him with endless posts on the talk page. If he makes any arguments which are hard to refute, well, just skip over them in your response and they are as good as nullified (who else is reading, after all!)." [21] Whether Wdford agrees with the statement displayed is unclear. What is certain is that it was never removed by himself and remains on display on his user talk page. If he did agree with the content which is currently displayed on his own user talk page (as authored by a different user), and behaved accordingly, then it may help provide some context to the types of behaviors that may contribute to arouse such unfortunate statements, although of course I do not personally endorse such statements. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 21:04, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena I'm pretty familiar with Wdford, and have disagreed with him before, on this page. I'm also pretty familiar with Wikipedia, including on much more scarred battlegrounds than this one (welcome to the Balkans). Resorting to attacks based on someone's perceived ethnicity and even pulling in insinuations that he could share the fate of "Jews in Europe" is way beyond unproductive, and this thread is about improving the page, not Wdford.--Calthinus (talk) 00:16, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
@Calthinus: I wholly agree that the language you highlighted is unsavory. I also question whether Wdford rallying support under the unjustified premise that one is "pushing the fringe Black Egyptian hypothesis" (a premise which I personally deem offensive and defamatory), or maintaining on display content (authored by a different user) which refers to admins as a "collection of talk-loving, action-shy mandarins", and openly expresses the intent to "make others one's bitch", should be tolerated. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 01:52, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
@Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena: please retract your claims that Wdford ever wrote "referring to admins as a "collection of talk-loving, action-shy mandarins", and openly expressing one's intent to "make others his bitch" and the other statements you claim he's made. I'm also disturbed that you are making screenshots of statements taken out of context. Those statements on his talk page were added in 2009 by another editor.[22] - that was deleted and restored here.[23] You should have seen that the signature to the post was not Wdford. You can retract your claim either by striking through your text, see Help:Wikitext. Doug Weller talk 08:29, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: I did not intend to disturb you. I did not see the signature. I clarified my words to more closely reflect what I observed. I also replaced the link to provide context. Thank you for your attention to detail. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 17:12, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

He is referring to me. Allanana79 (talk) 21:15, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Allanana79: who is referring to you where? I see the comment about your "views on "Jews in Europe". which was about " the Jews in Europe who controlled the wealth during WW2" which reads like anti-semitism, and the forum style post reverted by User:Johnuniq. That's all. Doug Weller talk 17:07, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: You referred to Allanana79 in your "editor [Allanana79] given a final warning" comment above at 20:31, 23 December 2020 which was in relation to your redaction. The confusion comes from this drawn-out section which has past its use-by date. Johnuniq (talk) 22:30, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
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