IT’S GREAT NEWS THAT, AT LAST, GENETICISTS AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS ARE PAYING THE COPTIC GENOME THE IMPORTANCE IT DESERVES IN THE FIELD OF ANTHRO-GENETICS
A large research study by a European institution on the Coptic genome has been approved and will soon start. The research group appreciates the importance of studying the Coptic genome, which has astonishingly so far been neglected by anthropologists and geneticists despite its undeniable importance in helping to answer many of the contested areas in human history. This new study will help us understand the Coptic DNA structure; its genetic affinities and variations in relation to other groups in the area; the demographic history of Egypt; and the history of human migrations out and back to Africa, and the routes they took.
We have always called for this kind of study, focusing on the Copts who are one of the most ancient peoples in the world, and who represent the direct and purest descendants of the ancient Egyptians. The Copts are an African ethnolinguistic group which has been shown in smaller groups in the past to cluster separately from the rest of the Egyptians, forming their own “Coptic component”, that could resemble the ancestral Egyptian population, without any Arabic influence.[1] Studying their genome will be extremely helpful in answering so many of the questions that still remain largely unanswered in the field of anthropology, such as the route that the modern Homo sapiens took in their migration out of Africa some 50,000-100,000 years ago into Eurasia. Using the Coptic genome and comparing it to that of the Ethiopian genome can provide a quick and easily-obtained answer to that question, without the need to mask out external influences such as those found in other Egyptian peoples.[2]
The scientific world would be waiting with much excitement and anticipation as we do.
We shall provide our readers with more detail over the next days, so, follow us closely!
[1] Begona Dobon et al, The genetics of East African populations: A Nilo-Saharan component in the African genetic landscape in Scientific Reports 5, 9996, 2015.
[2] Like what happened in Luca Pagani et al, Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians in Am J Hum Genet. 2015 Jun 4; 96(6): 986–991.