Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - A Potted History of Egypt Shows No Sign Of A Global Flood

We decoded the oldest genetic data from an Egyptian; a man buried around 4,500 years ago – what it told us

Geographic location of the Nuwayrat cemetery (red dot) and the previously sequenced Third Intermediate Period individuals from Abusir el-Meleq²⁰ (purple diamond).

Round about the time when the Bible’s timeline claims there was a global genocidal flood deep enough to cover the highest mountains, the body of a man was being interred in a large earthenware pot in a tomb in Egypt. If there had been a flood such as that described in the Bible, this burial would have been swept away or at least buried under a deep layer of sediment containing the jumbled remains of animals and plants killed in the flood — including species from disconnected landmasses, since there would have been no barriers to how far they could have been transported by the floodwaters.

Yet none of this appears to be true. Egyptian civilisation, which can trace its origins back to around 5,500 BCE, continued unbroken, with no record of a flood other than the annual Nile inundations on which their agriculture depended, until Egypt was absorbed first into the Greek Empire of Alexander and then into the Roman Empire. There is quite simply no record of a global flood in any Egyptian sources, and no evidence that the country was repopulated by people radiating out from a centre somewhere in the Middle East who could miraculously read and write in the hieroglyphics used by pre-“Flood” Egyptians.

Instead, we now have the genetic evidence of the man’s DNA, which tells a story of Egyptian origins that includes both North African and Mesopotamian ancestry.

How the remains of this pot burial were discovered and analysed is the subject of an open-access paper in Nature by an international team of archaeologists led by Dr Adeline Morez Jacobs, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Padua, Italy, and a visiting lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Dr Morez has also described the research and its significance in an open-access article in The Conversation, in the form of an interview. This article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Published: September 3, 2025 2.14pm BST

We decoded the oldest genetic data from an Egyptian; a man buried around 4,500 years ago – what it told us

Pottery vessel in which the Nuwayrat individual was discovered.

Morez Jacobs, A. et al. (2025). Nature (CC-BY 4.0)

Adeline Morez Jacobs, University of Padua

A group of scientists has sequenced the genome of a man who was buried in Egypt around 4,500 years ago. The study offers rare insight into the genetic ancestry of early Egyptians and reveals links to both ancient north Africa and Mesopotamia, which includes modern day Iraq and parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Egypt’s heat and terrain made it difficult for such studies to be conducted but lead researcher Adeline Morez Jacobs and team made a breakthrough. We spoke to her about the challenges of sequencing ancient remains, the scientific advances that made this discovery possible, and why this genome could reshape how we understand Egypt’s early dynastic history.

What is genome sequencing? How does it work in your world?

Genome sequencing is the process of reading an organism’s entire genetic code. In humans, that’s about 3 billion chemical “letters” (A, C, T and G). The technology was first developed in the late 1970s, and by 2003 scientists had completed the first full human genome. But applying it to ancient remains came much later and has been far more difficult.

DNA breaks down over time. Heat, humidity and chemical reactions damage it, and ancient bones and teeth are filled with DNA from soil microbes rather than from the individual we want to study. In early attempts during the 1980s, scientists hoped mummified remains might still hold usable DNA. But the available sequencing methods weren’t suited to the tiny, fragmented molecules left after centuries or millennia.

To sequence DNA, scientists first need to make lots of copies of it, so there’s enough to read. Originally, this meant putting DNA into bacteria and waiting for the colonies to grow. It took days, demanded careful upkeep and yielded inconsistent results. Two breakthroughs changed this.

In the early 1990s, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) allowed millions of DNA copies to be made in hours, and by the mid-2000s, new sequencing machines could read thousands of fragments in parallel. These advances not only sped up the process but also made it more reliable, enabling even highly degraded DNA to be sequenced.

Since then, researchers have reconstructed the genomes of extinct human relatives like Neanderthals, and more than 10,000 ancient people who lived over the past 45,000 years. But the work is still challenging – success rates are low for very old remains, and tropical climates destroy DNA quickly.

What’s exceptional about the sequencing you did on these remains?

What made our study unusual is that we were able to sequence a surprisingly well-preserved genome from a region where ancient DNA rarely survives.

When we analysed the sample, we found that about 4%-5% of all DNA fragments came from the person himself (the rest came from bacteria and other organisms that colonised the remains after burial). The quantity of DNA of interest (here, human) is usually between 40% and 90% when working with living organisms. That 4%-5% might sound tiny, but in this part of the world, it’s a relatively high proportion, and enough to recover meaningful genetic information.

We think the individual’s unusual burial may have helped. He was placed inside a ceramic vessel within a rock-cut tomb, which could have shielded him from heat, moisture and other damaging elements for thousands of years.

Rock cut tombs at Nuwayrat enclosing the pottery vessel containing the pottery coffin burial.

Morez Jacobs, A. et al. (2025). Nature (CC-BY 4.0)

To make the most of this rare preservation, we filtered out the very shortest fragments, which are too damaged to be useful. The sequencing machines could then focus on higher-quality pieces. Thanks to advanced facilities at the Francis Crick Institute, we were able to read the DNA over and over, generating about eight billion sequences in total. This gave us enough data to reconstruct the genome of what we call the Nuwayrat individual, making him the oldest genome from Egypt to date.

Does this open new frontiers?

We did not develop entirely new techniques for this study but we combined some of the most effective methods currently available into a single optimised pipeline. This is what palaeogeneticists (scientists who study the DNA of ancient organisms) often do: we adapt and refine existing methods to push the limits of what can be recovered from fragile remains.

That’s why this result matters. It shows that, with the right combination of methods, we can sometimes retrieve genomes even from places where DNA usually doesn’t survive well, like Egypt.

Egypt is also a treasure trove for archaeology, with remains that could answer major questions about human history, migration and cultural change.

Our success suggests that other ancient Egyptian remains might still hold genetic secrets, opening the door to discoveries we couldn’t have imagined just a decade ago.

What was your biggest takeaway from the sequencing?

The most exciting result was uncovering this man’s genetic ancestry. By comparing his DNA to ancient genomes from Africa, western Asia and Europe, we found that about 80% of his ancestry was shared with earlier north African populations, suggesting shared roots within the earlier local population. The remaining 20% was more similar to groups from the eastern Fertile Crescent, particularly Neolithic Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).

This might sound expected, but until now we had no direct genetic data from an Old Kingdom (2686–2125 BCE) Egyptian individual. The results support earlier studies of skeletal features from this period, which suggested close links to predynastic populations, but the genome gives a far more precise and conclusive picture.

This genetic profile fits with archaeological evidence of long-standing connections between Egypt and the eastern Fertile Crescent, dating back at least 10,000 years with the spread of farming, domesticated animals and new crops into Egypt. Both regions also developed some of the world’s first writing systems, hieroglyphs in Egypt and cuneiform in Mesopotamia. Our finding adds genetic evidence to the picture, suggesting that along with goods and ideas, people themselves were moving between these regions.

Of course, one person can’t represent the full diversity of the ancient Egyptian society, which was likely complex and cosmopolitan, but this successful sequencing opens the door for future studies, building a richer and more nuanced picture of the people who lived there over thousands of years.
Adeline Morez Jacobs, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Padova (Italy); visiting lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University (UK), University of Padua

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation.
Free access. (CC BY 4.0)

Abstract
Ancient Egyptian society flourished for millennia, reaching its peak during the Dynastic Period (approximately 3150–30 bce). However, owing to poor DNA preservation, questions about regional interconnectivity over time have not been addressed because whole-genome sequencing has not yet been possible. Here we sequenced a 2× coverage whole genome from an adult male Egyptian excavated at Nuwayrat (Nuerat, نويرات). Radiocarbon dated to 2855–2570 cal. bce, he lived a few centuries after Egyptian unification, bridging the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods. The body was interred in a ceramic pot within a rock-cut tomb¹, potentially contributing to the DNA preservation. Most of his genome is best represented by North African Neolithic ancestry, among available sources at present. Yet approximately 20% of his genetic ancestry can be traced to genomes representing the eastern Fertile Crescent, including Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. This genetic affinity is similar to the ancestry appearing in Anatolia and the Levant during the Neolithic and Bronze Age^2,3,4,5. Although more genomes are needed to fully understand the genomic diversity of early Egyptians, our results indicate that contacts between Egypt and the eastern Fertile Crescent were not limited to objects and imagery (such as domesticated animals and plants, as well as writing systems)^6,7,8,9 but also encompassed human migration.

Main
For thousands of years, the Egyptian Dynastic civilization (approximately 3150–30 bce) developed monumental architecture, sophisticated technology and relatively stable belief systems, becoming the longest-lasting civilization known. Following the political unification of the northern and southern regions of Egypt (Lower and Upper Egypt) at the end of the fourth millennium bce, the Old Kingdom (2686–2125 bce) witnessed considerable advances, including the construction of the first step pyramid complex of King Djoser and the ‘Great Pyramid of Giza’ built by King Khufu. The population has been considered to be of local origin, with limited input from neighbouring regions^8,10. Yet, more recent archaeological evidence shows that trade connections existed across the Fertile Crescent since at least the sixth millennium bce⁷, if not earlier, with the advent of the Neolithic package (such as domesticated animals and plants)^6,7. Cultural exchange continued to develop through the late fourth millennium bce with the growing Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia^7,8,9. This period overlaps with the appearance of additional innovations in Egypt (such as the pottery wheel)¹¹ and the earliest evidence of hieroglyphic writing in the form of ivory tags in Tomb U-j at Abydos, dated 3320–3150 bce⁷.

Our knowledge of ancient Egyptians has increased through decades of bioarchaeological analyses^12,13,14,15, including dental morphological studies on their relatedness to other populations in North Africa and West Asia^16,17,18. However, the lack of ancient genomes, particularly for the early periods of Egyptian Dynastic history, remains a barrier to our understanding of population continuity and gene flow in the region. Although individuals from ancient Egypt were subjected to the first effort to isolate ancient DNA¹⁹, direct genome sequencing has remained elusive because of the challenging regional DNA preservation conditions. So far, only three individuals from Abusir el-Meleq (Fig. 1a) have yielded nuclear DNA, all post-dating the emergence of Dynastic Egypt by thousands of years (from 787 cal. bce to 23 cal. ce)²⁰. Moreover, these are not complete genome sequences but are limited to approximately 90,000–400,000 target-enriched genotypes. Over the millennia spanning the Dynastic Period, Egypt witnessed several wide-ranging wars, occupation by foreign rulers and dramatic episodes of internal political collapse (First, Second and Third Intermediate periods)²¹. Together, these processes may have substantially altered or reshaped the overall genetic structure and ancestry of the Egyptian population. Here we present a whole-genome sequence of an ancient Egyptian individual (2.02× coverage; Supplementary Table 1), recovered from a necropolis at Nuwayrat (نويرات, Nuerat; Fig. 1a).

Fig. 1: Geographic location and date of the Nuwayrat individual in context.

a, Geographic location of the Nuwayrat cemetery (red dot) and the previously sequenced Third Intermediate Period individuals from Abusir el-Meleq²⁰ (purple diamond). b, Pottery vessel in which the Nuwayrat individual was discovered. c, Cervical vertebrae belonging to the Nuwayrat individual with evidence of extreme osteoarthritis (arrows). d, Summary of genomic and radiocarbon data. See the detailed breakdown of the quality indicators and calibration results for the three replicates and the combined date in Supplementary Table 2. e, Egyptian civilization timeline and radiocarbon date of the Nuwayrat and Third Intermediate Period individuals. mtDNA, mitochondrial DNA. Photo in b reproduced courtesy of the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, University of Liverpool.

The Nuwayrat individual
Nuwayrat is located near the village of Beni Hasan, 265 km south of Cairo (Fig. 1a). Radiocarbon dating of the skeletal remains showed that the Nuwayrat individual died between 2855 and 2570 cal. bce (95.4% probability; Supplementary Information section 1 and Supplementary Table 2), which overlaps with the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods (Fig. 1e). This result supports the initial archaeological assessments that material culture and funerary practices at the site were consistent with those of the Third and Fourth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom^1,22. The body was placed in a large pottery vessel inside a rock-cut tomb (Fig. 1b and Extended Data Fig. 1). This treatment would have ordinarily been reserved for individuals of a higher social class relative to others at the site²³, as observed elsewhere during the Early Dynastic Period and at the Old Kingdom royal cemeteries near the city of Memphis (Supplementary Information section 1).

Although acknowledging known limitations in predicting phenotypic traits in understudied populations²⁴, the Nuwayrat individual is predicted to have had brown eyes, brown hair and skin pigmentation ranging from dark to black skin, with a lower probability of intermediate skin colour (Methods and Supplementary Table 10). The individual was genetically male (XY sex chromosomes; Supplementary Table 1), consistent with the expression of standard skeletal features²⁵ (Methods). Our further osteological examination revealed that he would have stood 157.4–160.5 cm tall²⁶. He lived to an advanced age for the time (approximately 44–64 years; the upper end of this range is the most probable^25,27), as evidenced by his heavily worn teeth and age-related osteoarthritis in most joints and vertebrae, in some cases severe (Fig. 1c). This and various activity-induced musculoskeletal indicators of stress revealed that he experienced an extended period of physical labour, seemingly in contrast to his high-status tomb burial. The patterns of osteoarthritis and stress indicators further imply the form of physical activity that he routinely engaged in, which some researchers maintain can provide clues concerning occupation^28,29. In this case, although circumstantial, they are not inconsistent with those of a potter, as depicted in ancient Egyptian imagery. Estimates of biological affinity based on dental morphological features and cranial measurements parallel the genomic results (below). More detailed information about the Nuwayrat individual is presented in Supplementary Information section 2, with a facial depiction in Supplementary Information section 3 (Extended Data Fig. 2).

Multi-isotope analysis (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N, δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) was conducted on dental enamel and dental collagen from the lower-left second molar to determine his childhood diet and geographic origin (Supplementary Information section 5). All results are consistent with having grown up in the hot, dry climate of the Nile Valley (δ¹⁸O_{carb VSMOW} = 23.6‰, where VSMOW indicates Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water; ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.707888)^30,31,32 and consuming an omnivorous diet based on terrestrial animal protein and plants, such as wheat and barley (δ¹³C_VPDB = −19.6‰, where VPDB indicates Vienna Pee Dee Belemnite; ¹⁵NAIR = 12.3‰)33, typical for Egyptians until the Coptic period³⁴. An elevated δ¹⁵N value, frequently observed in isotope studies of ancient Egyptians, may have been caused by the arid environment^35,36,37, eating foods raised on manured fields³⁸ and/or inclusion of Nile fish in the diet³⁴.

Morez Jacobs, A., Irish, J.D., Cooke, A. et al.
Whole-genome ancestry of an Old Kingdom Egyptian. Nature 644, 714–721 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09195-5

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This evidence piles onto the already overwhelming case against the biblical flood myth. If such a cataclysm had ever taken place, it would have obliterated entire civilisations, wiped clean the cultural records, and left behind a thick, chaotic layer of bones and debris across the globe. Yet what we see instead is continuity: Egypt building monuments, farming its fertile floodplains, and burying its dead in peace, completely oblivious to the supposed drowning of the entire world.

The pot burial in Egypt is not just an archaeological curiosity; it is a direct contradiction of biblical literalism. His DNA reveals a story of ancestry and cultural connections that fits perfectly with the scientific understanding of human migration and interaction — and not at all with the fantasy of a world restarted from a single boatload of survivors.

Creationists often demand “evidence” for evolution and against their myths. Here it is: one man, buried 4,500 years ago, whose existence alone demolishes the claim that a global flood ever happened. No miracles required, no ad hoc excuses — just the hard, silent testimony of archaeology, genetics, and history.

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