For anyone interested.
Googlesearch: King Tut / Tutankhamun and race - and you will find a longstanding debate (/warfare)and senseless arguing about the race of the son of Akhenaten. His name literally tranlates as the 'Living image of God" Tut-Ankh-Amun/Aten/TAFARI.
Some of you might remember a while back, during a Discovery Channel documentary, a few of King Tutankhamun's DNA markers were leaked on the show. iGENEA, a Swiss genetics company, took the opportunity to use the genetic markers revealed during the documentary (from a few screen captures) to reconstruct his Y-DNA profile. They claimed that more than half of Western European men are related to King Tut. This is being passed around as science and accurate (based off the Discovery Channels partial "findings")
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Here are some interesting articles in response to the Discovery Channel based DNA claims:
Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany's University of Tubingen who was part of the SAME team that unraveled Tut's DNA stated,
iGENEA's claims are simply impossible ... Pusch's team used snippets of Y-chromosome DNA to link Tut to his closest relatives, identifying his mom and dad. But they didn't publish the full genetic data that would allow genomics companies like iGENEA to link modern people to the Tutankhamen lineage ... But people hoping to prove that they've got an ancestor in common with the notoriously sickly boy king should take iGENEA's claims with a grain of salt, Pusch said: "It appears that they try to better sell their DNA testing kit by using the media attention connected to King Tut."
And Dr. Albert Zink stated,
Dr. Albert Zink from the EURAC [European Academy of Bolzano, an independent research center] in Bolzano and co-author of the 2010 JAMA publication screened the footage and confirmed that the company acts very unscientific," Pusch wrote in an email to LiveScience. "The Swiss company did not try to get into contact with us prior to launching their new Internet page."
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So who are iGENEA?
iGENEA is a Swiss ancestry analysis company which I had deservedly mocked a couple of years ago because of its ridiculous claims. In my experience, commercial ancestry analysis outfits are often plagued by either of two problems:
1. They offer too little value, such as a breakdown of an individual into the categories of "Europe", "Asia", and "Africa".
2. They pretend to offer too much value, such as the ability to connect one's Y-chromosome with Old Testament priests, numerous ancient "tribes", or to break down one's genome to a very fine detail that is not commensurate with the power of the DNA evidence they collect (e.g., with the CODIS markers)
iGENEA is a great example of #2.
Now, they have done it again, pretending to be able to link men with a particular R1b1a2 haplotype with King Tut. Note that the Y-chromosome of King Tut has never been published, and speculation about it is based on some screencaps from a Discovery Channel documentary that may or may not belong to the Pharaoh:
iGENEA was able to reconstruct the Y-DNA profile of Tutankhamun, his father Akhenaten and his grandfather Amenhotep III with the help of a recording of the Discovery Channel. The astonishing result:
Indeed, the whole business of mummy DNA is highly suspect, as Jo Marchant has covered quite comprehensively in Nature News; see also King Tut's DNA in doubt.
The original paper in the JAMA was remarkable for its non-publishing of crucial data necessary to validate the claims within it. This is yet another argument against the flawed peer-review system whose main objective, it seems, is to take in money for journals and dole out prestige to authors, and not to do actual science.
http://dienekes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/igeneas-king-tut-claims.html
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So are there any other studies / conflicting evidence?
- Of course. But in the spirit of racist science, we aren't told about these:
"Now, onto more salient and fruitful information (that somehow went relatively unnoticed).
DNA Tribes autosomal STR DNA article shows that King Tut's DNA matches closely to Central Africans, although not exclusively. The results:
Results indicated the autosomal STR profiles of the Amarna period mummies were most frequent in modern populations in several parts of Africa. These results are based on the 8 STR markers for which these pharaonic mummies have been tested, which allow a preliminary geographical analysis for these individuals who lived in Egypt during the Amarna period of the 14th century BCE. Although results do not necessarily suggest exclusively African ancestry, geographical analysis suggests ancestral links with neighboring populations in Africa for the studied pharaonic mummies. If new data become available in the future, it might become possible to further clarify results and shed new light on the relationships of ancient individuals to modern populations."
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread884241/pg1
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Still unsure?
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