How did the Caucasian Egyptians who built ancient Egypt go extinct?

Question

The Egyptians were Arabs, Arabs are Caucasian.

Answer 1

ancient egypt had in its beginning a dynasty of black -nubian- pharaons. this doesnt mean that all the egyptians were like them. ancient egyptian society was more a melting pot with nubians, jews, other semites and camites. no relation with arabs, maybe more with present day berbers (now in tunisia, algeria and morocco).
after alexander the great, there were also many greeks, and in roman times people from all over the empire.
after the arab invasion egypt was islamized and many arabs immigrated. today we have the result of all this migrations, nobody has gone extinct, they just mixed up together.

the problem in your question is that the division of human beings into races such as "caucasic", "black" etc... is wrong and too generalized.

Answer 2

In the first place, it is highly doubtful that the ancient Egyptians WERE Caucasians at all. To judge from their portraits of themselves, they were quite dark-skinned. A book by an author whose name I forget even suggests that they were black Africans. Secondly, they did not become extinct quickly, but by successive waves of conquest and intermixing with the invaders - Lybians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and other races. There are still traces of the ancient Egyptian stock in the native population of the country today, particularly in what are known as the 'fellahs' or 'fellahin.'

Answer 3

There is evidence that the ancient Egyptians were not caucasian. Part of their lineage was Nubian... and that is BLACK. Even the famous Queen of Sheba was thought to have been a black woman. It is also entirely possible that the 'Old Kingdom" Egyptians were black.

OH... to answer the second part of your question... they did NOT go Extinct... they are still with us today, which is why pure blooded Egyptians are a light brown.

Answer 4

Who says they were Caucasian? They were Egyptians and were most likely closer in skin tone to the present residents of the area.
That said it should be noted that the Egyptians also mated with other societies so the results down the road would turn out a mix.
What I am trying to point out is that it is not important what race they were, but rather to study them for who they were and what they did and learn from it.

Answer 5

1st mistake.... Arabs are not Caucasians... they are semetic. #2 who said that there ever were any Caucasian Egyptians?

Answer 6

I think there should be a "racist" section on Yahoo so that the rest of us wouldnt have to deal with this kind of obnoxious, ignorant stuff.

Answer 7

they went through the Star gate.

Answer 8

I'm posting here what is essentially the answer I give to the frequent occurence of the "Egyptians were (fill in race here)" questions.
The executive summary: They were neither "white" nor "black" - they were Egyptian.




There was a great range of physical appearances in ancient Egypt, much like there is in modern Egypt as the general physical characteristics have probably not changed all that greatly - there have been new population groups introduced, but most scholars feel that their influence has been fairly small and gradual and new population groups have been moving through Egypt since humans first arrived there.

The ancient Egyptians were African, as Egypt is in Africa. "African" is frequently conflated with "black" especially in the US and Europe, despite the vast range of physical appearance, including skin tones and facial features among various indigenous African groups. The ancient Egyptians had a variety of skin tones, roughly similar to those seen in Egypt today - that is, ranging from relatively light skinned/tan to very dark skinned, with hair that is straight, curly or very curly, noses that range in shape and eyes that are brown, blue, grey, or green. This is a standard phenotype for most North Africans. Ancient Libyans - Tehenu/Tejenu - are occasionally depicted in Egyptian art as having red hair and blue eyes, but this is usually treated as something unusual in the Egyptian artistic conventions.

It might be worth noting that many modern Egyptians are offended if called "black" - yet another complicated aspect of racial and ethnic categories and the way they shift meanings from context to context.
By the same token, modern Egyptians tend to distinguish themselves from Europeans on the basis of external physical appearance as well.
There was population movement into Egypt despite it's relative isolation from both father south in Africa and from western Asia that contributed in a slight way to the external physical characteristics of the general population. Most scholars characterize these populations movements as essentially "drops in the bucket" of the broader population.

Ancient Egyptian art had certain conventions for depicting Egyptians as well as other population groups. Egyptian males are typically shown as red or reddish brown, women in a yellowish shade, Nubians as black, and Asiatics as yellow. This may not have always reflected the reality of individual appearance as most of these depictions were not intended as portraits.

It's important to realize that most scholars in history and anthropology no longer consider race to be a reality in a genetic sense. Rather, we consider race to be a cultural construction and the definitions of race vary from culture to culture and context to context.

The majority of Egyptologists, anthropologists and historians will tell you that despite the Arab Conquest, modern Egyptians don't look all that different from ancient Egyptians, especially outside Cairo. It's important to note that most of the Arabs and other Muslims who migrated into Egypt following the conquest tended (with exceptions, of course) to reside primarily around Cairo and to remain fairly exclusive in their marriage habits.

The confusion and controversy over race comes in because of the history of the disciplines of Egyptology, anthropology, and history, the history of European colonialism, and the history of the rise of Afrocentrism.

In the early days of Egyptology western thought was that white Europeans were superior to all other "races" and therefore a civilization like Egypt could not have arisen out of a black African "race" - a race that, for social and political (eg colonialism) reasons was considered inferior to that of Europeans (and especially northern Europeans). This lead to theories such as the "Dynastic Race" - an idea that the Egyptian state arose after the invasion of a separate race of (white or Semitic) people from Western Asia who subjugated the native Egyptians and became the ruling class, though they eventually intermarried with the "natives". This also nicely explained the features of Egyptians as shown in various ancient depictions which weren't stereotypically "black" but weren't stereotypically "white European" either.
This theory is no longer popularly accepted - nor should it be, though it has been embraced by a number of White Supremacist groups. Archaeological evidence does not support it, nor do most studies of human remains from the pertinent period of Egyptian history, though ascertaining "race" from skeletal remains has its own problems. Essentially, "race" as determined from skeletal remains is more of a continuum - as in, this skeleton shows a series of features, usually cranial features, that tend to stereotypically "*******," "Caucasian," etc. (The terms are still used by many physical anthropologists, especially those working forensic cases, thus adding to the confusion of race and what it means.) You can come close, but it's not exact, and it's not going to tell you eye color, skin tone, or hair type - the phenotypic features that most cultures rely upon to define "race."

In reaction to ideas like the "Dynastic Race Theory" and with the rise of the black pride movement, the civil rights movement and other social/political movements, certain members of the black community, especially in the US, have argued that the Egyptians were "black" which they usually define, at least in the US as looking like the majority of black Americans. In some of its most extreme forms, this movement has suggested that Europeans deliberately changed or defaced monuments to hide the "African" features of ancient Egyptians (which is totally ridiculous) and they tend to point to evidence of Egyptian "blackness" that is not really valid within the broader scholarly understanding of ancient Egypt.

Evidence of "whiteness" is as difficult to demonstrate unless, again, you pick and choose evidence very carefully and discard everything that argues against the thesis of Egyptian "whiteness." As noted earlier, the Egyptians themselves had their own system of distinguising phenotypic differences. There was also a range of appearances, making it difficult to establish "race" as it is defined by modern people. (And for that matter which cultural definition of race do we use? From which time period? From which country?)

The big problem with this movement and the claiming of Egypt by black pride movements is that it ignores the points of origin of most African Americans - slaves were derived primarily from sub-Saharan Africa, some distance from Egypt and in areas the had little or no contact with ancient Egypt. It also tends to treat Africa as though it is one huge cultural unit, disregarding the vast amount of diversity and individuality of various African cultures. It also tends to shortchange and direct attention away from other amazing African cultures, such as the cultural group associated with the amazing constructions at Great Zimbabwe.
By the same token claiming Egypt as a European achievement is equally problematic. While certainly a cornerstone of the broader history of "Western civilization" Egypt is equally a corner stone of the broader history of the world and the broader history of African and Middle Eastern civilzation.
Overall, the primarily problem with the Afrocentrism movement is that it tends not to meet the rigorous requirements of modern scholastic practice and that those who argue against their theories are accused of being racist, white supremacists, or of being part of a vast conspiracy to claim Egypt as a white culture. In other words, the proponents of Afrocentrism rely on ad hominem personal attacks on those they disagree with, rather than addressing their arguments.
The same can be said of white-supremicist driven theories regarding the race/ethnicity of ancient Egyptians. The fact that they are offensive is not sufficient to dispel them. The fact that they are unsupported by a full accounting of the evidence available should dispel them.
In essence, its wise to be suspicious of any theory obviously driven by a clear socio-political ideology. This is not to say that such theories are worthless, but manipulation of evidence ("cherry-picking" as so many people call it) to support such ideologies is hardly a new thing - the ancient Egyptians themselves did it.

As a scholar, I don't think the Egyptians were white, but I don't think that they were "black" in the common usage either - I think that they were Egyptian. I think, based on evidence from their own texts, artistic representations, etc., that they defined themselves as "Egyptian" in opposition to other groups. I don't think that you can apply modern categories with their own baggage to the past and I don't think that it serves any worthwhile purpose to "claim" an ancient cultural group as one's own without a wealth of evidence. I study ancient Egypt because I find it interesting, not because I feel that I need to support a modern social-political ideology and to be frank, at times I get a little tired of the ongoing arguing because I think that it distracts from the really interesting parts of Egyptian culture and because I don't think it should matter what box on a census form an ancient Egyptian would check. I say again, they were Egyptian - and that's all that should matter.

This is not to deny that there have been any number of theories, suggestions, hypotheses, and reconstructions put forth by Egyptologists in the 200 years of the existence of the discipline that most modern people would find reprehensible. But what must be remembered is that those scholars were a product of their times and a product of the social, political, historical context around them. They interpreted the evidence they had available to them in the way that made sense to them.
When additional evidence became available and/or when scholarly understanding of the nature of humans, race, ethnicity, etc., changed, so have the interpretations made. In essence, we are all doing the best job we can with the tools we have available.