Genetic Analysis of King Tut and His Family

Ancient Egyptian bust depicting Pharaoh Tutankhamun

DNATribes Digest January 1, 2012

DNATribes is a personal genomics company that uses autosomal DNA (that is, DNA inherited from both the mother and the father) to measure individuals' relatedness to various world populations. Their official FAQ can be read here. Anyway, they recently subjected genetic data extracted from a family of Egyptian mummies, including the famous boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun, to their methods of analysis, and they report the following 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.

Click to expand...

I should add that although 8 STR markers may sound like a uselessly small number of genetic loci, geneticists are actually able to use as few as 5 STRs to determine world population relationships. Furthermore, DNATribes is able to determine which specific ethnic groups within a region individuals are most closely related to using 15-27 STRs, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine that 8 would suffice to place individuals within larger world regions.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on these findings? I admit that the South African ties surprised me, but the African Great Lakes connections make sense when you consider that the Nile River flows from Lake Victoria.

I've seen world migration maps. I think it would be interesting to see something similar for Africa on a regional scale.


And, yeah, I'd like to know what's up? with that S.African connection, too. The only thing I can think of offhand is that area is one of the few places in Africa that grains can easily grow besides the Nile Valley.