All the Semitic speaking populations have Chalcolithic Iranian admixture. The direct descendants of the Canaanite, the Lebanese, have around half of their Near Eastern genetic makeup from Chalcolithic Iranians.
Yeah. Makes sense, the Levant and fertile crescent have had a lot of population movement over time.
The Late Period and Hellenistic Egyptian samples had ChL admixture also, but less than the modern Egyptians today, and this points to evident additional processes of admixture between Semitic speaking groups in the region. The other North African groups have less of it but have more of Iberomaurusian, Subsaharan, and European admixture.
That's why I specified 'Predynastic' Egyptians. I think they are likely the purest Afro-Asiatic stock compared to NAs who have some west African and European genetics and Cushites who have Nilotic + Omotic ancestry.
Are the Coptics still mostly Egyptian, or have they also absorbed a lot of ChL ancestry as well?
Somalis don't seem to have more than a little over 1% of ChL Iranian, and I suspect our Near Eastern ancestors had more genetic differentiation and less heterozygosity.
What do you by this?
If, true it could mean they were Pre-Pottery Neolithic and mixed with ancestral Nilotic people shortly after the introduction of agriculture, or they had a time of isolation from other related populations for an unknown reason.
I think the Old Kingdom Egyptians probably had less ChL admixture than Late/Hellenistic, and the close geographic proximity with the Levant makes it convincing, and hopefully, we'll see some aDNA studies published to clarify this.
I would discount any time after the Old Kingdom, as a lot of foreign ancestry came into Egypt during and after the Middle and New Kingdoms.
