The Badarian culture seems to have had multiple sources, of which the
Western Desert was probably the most influential. The Badari culture was likely not solely restricted to the Badari region, since related finds have been made farther to the south at
Mahgar Dendera,
Armant,
Elkab and
Nekhen (named
Hierakonpolis by the Greeks), as well as to the east in the
Wadi Hammamat. Older and modern scholarship have characterised the Badarians as an indigenous,
Northeast African population that was rooted in a localised, context. An assemblage of archaeological data have identified a common African substratum for early Egyptian cultural practices. Central African tool designs are featured in the Badarian and Naqada archaeological sites. According to archaeologist,
Charles Thurstan Shaw, "the early cultures of Merimde, Badari, Naqadi I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of Egyptian way of life." Recent archaeological evidence has suggested that the
Tasian and Badarian Nile Valley sites were a peripheral network of earlier Northeast African cultures that featured the movement of Badarian, Saharan,
Nubian and
Nilotic populations.
Cranial traits In 1971, Eugene Strouhal came to the conclusion that the distribution of the Badarian skulls extends from the "
Europoid" to "
Negroid" range, according to an obsolete racial categorization that has been disproven. Of the total 117 skulls, the majority of 94 skulls showed mixed Europoid-Negroid features. The share of both components was nearly the same, with some overweight to the Europoid side. Even though the share of 'pure' Negroes is small (6-8%), being half that of the Europoid forms (12.9%), the high majority of mixed forms (80.3%) suggests a long-lasting dispersion of African genes in the population. Additionally, in some of the Badarian crania hair was preserved, in the first series they were curly in 6 cases, wavy in 33 cases and straight in 10 cases. They were black in 16 samples, dark brown in 11, brown in 12, light brown in 1, and grey in 11 cases. A 1993 craniofacial study performed by the anthropologist
C. Loring Brace reached the view that: "The Predynastic of Upper Egypt and the Late Dynastic of Lower Egypt are more closely related to each other than to any other population. As a whole, they show ties with the European Neolithic, North Africa, modern Europe, and, more remotely, India, but not at all with sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Asia, Oceania, or the New World." However, various
biological anthropological studies have demonstrated strong biological affinities between the Badarians and other Northeast African populations. S.O.Y. Keita, a biological anthropologist, in 1990 conducted a craniometric analysis, which included early pre-dynastic Badarian and Naqada I skulls. Both series were found to "cluster with tropical Africans", and with the latter overlapping with
Kerma. In 2005, S.O.Y. Keita examined Badarian crania from predynastic upper Egypt in comparison to
European (Norway and Hungary) and various
tropical African crania (Southern Africa, Mali and Kenya). He found that the predynastic Badarian series clustered much closer with the tropical African series. Although, no West Asian or other North African samples were included in the original study as the comparative series were selected based on "Brace et al.'s (1993) comments on the affinities of an upper Egyptian/Nubian epipalaeolithic series". Keita further noted that "additional analysis using material from Sudan, late dynastic northern Egypt (Gizeh), Somalia,
Asia and the
Pacific Islands show the Badarian series to be most similar to a series from the northeast quadrant of Africa and then to other Africans". Moreover, Keita criticised the methodology of the 1993
Brace study for excluding "the Maghreb, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa" from the designated Sub-Saharan group samples which he argued was nearly categorised and "(incorrectly)" as monolithic". Keita further commented on the findings of Boyce that whilst the "post-Badarian southern predynastic and a late dynastic northern series (called "E" or Gizeh) cluster together, and secondarily with Europeans", in the primary cluster with Egyptian groups there were also remains representing populations from ancient
Sudan and recent
Somalia. In 2008, Keita found that the early predynastic groups in Southern Egypt which included Badarian skeletal samples, were similar to Nile-Valley material from areas to the south and north of Upper Egypt. Overall, based on the 9 variables, the dynastic Egyptians (includes both Upper and Lower Egyptians) showed much closer affinities with the included Northeast African populations than Europeans, who were more similar to the set of Late Dynastic Egyptians. In his comparison to the various Egyptian series, Greeks, Somali/Horn, and Italians were used. He also concluded that more material was needed to make a firm conclusion about the relationship between the early
Holocene Nile valley populations and later ancient Egyptians. Kanya Godde in a 2009 study evaluated population relationships by comparing cranial traits in twelve Nubian and Egyptian groups which included skeletal remains from the Badarian period. The results showed small biological distance between the groups, which indicate there may have been some sort of gene flow between these groups of Nubians and Egyptians or a common adaptation to similar environments. Godde further specified that the Badarians, Naqadans and Kerma Nubian samples clustered closely in spite of the timescale differences. She also cited previous anthropological studies and archaeological evidence which indicated close affinities between the Badarians and other southernly, African populations. In 2020, Godde analysed a series of crania which included two Egyptian (predynastic Badarian and Naqada series), a series of A-Group Nubians, and a Bronze Age series from
Lachish, Palestine. The two pre-dynastic series had strongest affinities, followed by closeness between the Naqada and the Nubian series. Further, the Nubian A-Group plotted nearer to the Egyptians and the Lachish sample placed more closely to Naqada than Badari. According to Godde the spatial-temporal model applied to the pattern of biological distances explains the more distant relationship of Badari to Lachish than Naqada to Lachish as gene flow will cause populations to become more similar over time. Overall, both Egyptian samples were more similar to the Nubian series than to the Lachish series. In 2023,
Christopher Ehret wrote that the physical anthropological findings, performed by Keita and Zakrzewski, from the "major burial sites of those founding locales of ancient Egypt in the fourth millennium BCE, notably El-Badari as well as
Naqada, show no demographic indebtedness to the
Levant". Ehret specified that these studies revealed cranial and dental affinities with "closest parallels" to other longtime populations in the surrounding areas of
Northeastern Africa "such as Nubia and the northern Horn of Africa". He further commented that "members of this population did not come from somewhere else but were descendants of the long-term inhabitants of these portions of Africa going back many millennia". Ehret also cited existing,
archaeological,
linguistic and
genetic data which he argued supported the demographic history. Some researchers have critiqued the reliability of craniology—the study of skull shapes and sizes—in drawing definitive conclusions about the biological relationships and identities of ancient populations. Critics argue that cranial morphology can be influenced by various factors which may not accurately reflect genetic ancestry or population dynamics. According to S.O.Y. Keita, relying solely on cranial measurements without considering broader archaeological and environmental contexts can lead to oversimplified or misleading interpretations. Keita emphasizes that "cranial metrics alone are insufficient for determining discrete biological populations, especially in regions with significant genetic diversity and historical population movements". They argue that conclusions drawn strictly from craniological or other morphological analyses about cultural or ancestral relationships should be approached with caution and supported by multiple lines of evidence.
Dental traits Joel D. Irish and Lyle Konigsberg (2007) re-examined the findings of a 1955 study in light of recent archaeological and dental morphological data. They stated that re-inspection of the craniometric samples "indicate a Badarian affiliation to North Africans, not sub-Saharan samples". Dental trait analysis of Badarian fossils conducted in a thesis study found that they were closely related to other
Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting
Northeast Africa and the
Maghreb. Among the ancient populations, the Badarians were nearest to other
ancient Egyptians (
Naqada, Hierakonpolis,
Abydos and
Kharga in
Upper Egypt;
Hawara in
Lower Egypt), and
C-Group and Pharaonic era skeletons excavated in Lower Nubia, followed by the
A-Group culture bearers of Lower Nubia, the
Kerma and
Kush populations in Upper Nubia, the
Meroitic,
X-Group and
Christian period inhabitants of Lower Nubia, and the
Kellis population in the
Dakhla Oasis. Among the recent groups, the Badari markers were morphologically closest to the
Shawia and
Kabyle Berber populations of Algeria as well as Bedouin groups in Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, followed by other Afroasiatic-speaking populations in the
Horn of Africa. While dental trait analysis has been a useful tool in bioarchaeology for assessing biological relationships among ancient populations, recent scholarship highlights its limitations. Researchers caution that relying exclusively on dental morphology can be problematic due to factors such as environmental influences, dietary practices, and genetic drift, which can affect dental characteristics independently of genetic ancestry. Dental traits may exhibit convergent evolution, where similar dental features develop in unrelated populations due to similar selective pressures, potentially leading to misinterpretations of population affinities. Bioanthropologist
Christy G. Turner II and colleagues have emphasized that "dental morphology alone may not provide a complete picture of population relationships and must be integrated with other lines of evidence." They advocate for a multidisciplinary approach to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of an ancient population.
Limb proportions Sonia Zakrzewski (2003), found that samples from the Badarian to the
Middle Kingdom in
Upper Egypt had "tropical body plans", but that their proportions were actually "super-negroid" (i.e. the limb indices are relatively longer than in many "African" populations). She proposed that the apparent development of an increasingly African body plan over time may also be due to Nubian mercenaries being included in the Middle Kingdom sample. Although, she noted that in spite of the differences in
tibae lengths among the Badarian and Early Dynastic samples, that "all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." Zakrzewski concluded that the "results must remain provisional due to the relatively small sample sizes and the lack of skeletal material that cross-cuts all social and economic groups within each time period". In 2011, Michelle Raxter examined the changes in limb proportions and body sizes in ancient Egyptians in a worldwide and regional comparative thesis study. The study featured 92 males and 528 female samples which included skeletal remains from the Badarian period. The Egyptian body sizes were compared with Nubian samples, as well as to modern Egyptian samples and other higher and lower latitude populations. Overall, the study found that "Ancient Egyptians have more tropically adapted limbs in comparison to body breadths, which tend to be intermediate when plotted against higher and lower latitude populations. These results may reflect the greater plasticity of limb lengths compared to body breadth. The results might also suggest early Mediterranean and/or Near Eastern influence in Northeast Africa". Raxter also acknowledged that a larger sample collection from the early and late predynastic groups would have enabled "closer examination of biological changes in the transition to agriculture". Limb proportion analysis has been utilized in physical anthropology to study climatic adaptations and infer aspects of population history among ancient groups. Measurements such as the brachial index (upper arm to forearm ratio) and crural index (thigh to lower leg ratio) have been used to assess thermoregulatory adaptations according to
Allen's rule, which posits that populations in warmer climates tend to have longer limbs to dissipate heat, while those in colder climates have shorter limbs to conserve heat. Scholarship has also highlighted the limitations of drawing definitive conclusions about cultural identity or ancestry based solely on limb proportions. Factors such as environmental influences during growth, nutritional status, and genetic admixture can affect limb development independently of genetic heritage or cultural practices. Additionally, plasticity in human growth can result in limb proportion variations within a population over relatively short time spans, potentially leading to misinterpretations when inferring long-term population histories. Anthropologist Tenton W. Holliday further cautions that "while limb proportions can provide insights into broad patterns of climatic adaptation, they are not definitive indicators of genetic relationships or cultural affiliations among ancient populations." Holliday emphasizes the importance of integrating multiple lines of data for a more accurate biological history. == Genetic data on the Badarian remains ==