This is consistent with NUE001’s genetic profile — the 80 percent North African Neolithic ancestry in his genome connects him to the people who had inhabited and cultivated the Nile Valley for millennia before the pharaonic state emerged.

The Fertile Crescent component in his genome, then, represents an additional layer of ancestry introduced during or after the Neolithic transition — a layer that the archaeological evidence suggests was related to the specific period of intensified contact between Egypt and the Near East that accompanied the emergence of the Dynastic state.

The Role Of Svante Pääbo And The Field He Built

No account of the NUE001 genome is complete without acknowledging the intellectual lineage that made it possible — and particularly the role of Svante Pääbo, whose early failures with Egyptian mummy DNA set the stage for everything that followed.