The evidence has sometimes been interpreted as showing direct Mesopotamian influence on Egypt during a period when Egyptian civilization was forming — what some researchers have called the “Uruk expansion,” the period in the late fourth millennium BCE when Mesopotamian urban culture expanded into surrounding regions.

What the genetic evidence from NUE001 adds to this picture is crucial: it suggests that the contact between Egypt and the eastern Fertile Crescent was not merely an exchange of objects, artistic conventions, and administrative technologies.

It involved actual movement of people.

The 20 percent Fertile Crescent component in NUE001’s ancestry reflects a genuine genetic contribution from eastern populations that entered Egypt at some point before or during his lifetime.

This is the difference between cultural diffusion and population movement.