The 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Man Found In A Tomb — And The DNA Test That Revealed His Unexpected Ancestry

Ancient individuals from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Levant show similar mixed profiles.

Ancient North African individuals from the Neolithic and earlier periods show the North African ancestry that is the dominant component of NUE001’s genome.

NUE001 sits, genetically, at the intersection of these two great streams of ancient Near Eastern and North African ancestry — in exactly the geographic and temporal position that would be expected for an individual from the Nile Valley at the beginning of the third millennium BCE.

The confirmation that an Old Kingdom Egyptian fits this expected genetic position is both satisfying and informative.