quote:But these are *NOT* the oldest tool industries in North Africa because those are found in the Nile Valley. So right off the bat they are excluding the Nile in order to pretend that all the main events in North African history started with Morocco. That is just deliberate disinformation and distortion. And when they do study the Nile they always do so not for the purposes of understanding African history in an African context, they always do it in the context of Eurasia.
Prehistoric research in North Africa has largely focused on the Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods as exemplified by the discovery of the oldest early modern human in Morocco (Richter et al., 2017) and the older stone artifacts and cut-marked bones in Algeria (Sahnouni et al., 2018). On the other hand, how populations transitioned to farming in North Africa has received less attention. Paleolithic North Africa is characterized by the Aterian culture that flourished about 30,000 BCE, and was later replaced by the Upper Paleolithic Iberomaurusian industry (~15,000 BCE). By ~12,000 BCE the Mesolithic Capsian culture appeared in the Maghreb, transitioning to farming communities in the 6th millennia BCE (Naylor 2015).
quote:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5744920/
Introduction
The Nile Valley geographically links eastern Africa to North Africa and the Levant, and is therefore key in discussions of modern human dispersals out-of and back-into-Africa during the Upper Pleistocene [1–6]. However, the number, routes and timing of these dispersals are highly controversial [7]. Archaeological evidence supporting the ‘northern’ route out of Africa through the Nile Valley is sparse and debated ([8], but see [9,10]) and human remains from this period, all attributed to modern human remains, remain few [11–14]. Most of the evidence for Pleistocene dispersals thus comes from genetic results. Comparisons between the archaeological record of the Nile Valley and adjacent regions are at the heart of testing dispersal hypotheses and their archaeological visibility.
The Late Pleistocene (~75-15ka) corresponds to a period of major climatic changes, including a global decrease in precipitation. In northern Africa, this period is characterised by an oscillation between semi-arid and extremely arid conditions, the latter of which prevail particularly during the 'Last Glacial Maximum' (LGM, ~23-18ka). The Sahara expands, with only one wet phase identified (~50-45ka [15]), until the abrupt onset of the African Humid Period (~15ka [16]). The shift to more arid conditions is also associated with the lowering of sea level and the desiccation of some major eastern African lakes during the LGM (e.g. [17–19]). This has important consequences for the behaviour of the River Nile, its role as an ecological refugium, and on human populations living in its vicinity.
quote:The oldest human remains were found in Morocco
Originally posted by Doug M:
[QB] At face value this paper is garbage as it pushes many invalid talking points that don't make any sense. First it uses Morocco as the epicenter of "North Africa" when it is not now and never has been the primary "locus" of North African populations or cultural evolution.
There is no discussion of the Nile Valley,
quote:this is anthropology
Originally posted by Antalas:
Egypt is complex and constitutes its own world. Moreover it is geopolitically considered as part of the middle east not North africa
quote:Yes but in these kind of works by "North Africa" they in general talk about the berber world. Egypt is always seen as the middle east and not as a proper north african country even though geographically it is.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:this is anthropology
Originally posted by Antalas:
Egypt is complex and constitutes its own world. Moreover it is geopolitically considered as part of the middle east not North africa
modern geopolitical categorizations don't matter. Also the map here excludes your own point about Iberomaurusians, Morocco isn't part of it and on the flip side U6 is not prominent in Egypt nor M81
also if possible please remove the repeat of that large Doug post and just say @Doug, no need to repeat such a big block of text although I appreciate the amount Doug put in, thanks
quote:Contemporary researchers don't call Egypt part of
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:Yes but in these kind of works by "North Africa" they in general talk about the berber world. Egypt is always seen as the middle east and not as a proper north african country even though geographically it is.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:this is anthropology
Originally posted by Antalas:
Egypt is complex and constitutes its own world. Moreover it is geopolitically considered as part of the middle east not North africa
modern geopolitical categorizations don't matter. Also the map here excludes your own point about Iberomaurusians, Morocco isn't part of it and on the flip side U6 is not prominent in Egypt nor M81
also if possible please remove the repeat of that large Doug post and just say @Doug, no need to repeat such a big block of text although I appreciate the amount Doug put in, thanks
I don't understand the rest of your answer, it seems you misunderstood what I wrote.
quote:The point here is that they are using morocco because of its proximity to Europe in order to fabricate the idea that stone tool technology evolution in Africa required migration and interaction with Europeans, which is blatantly false. First the problem starts with the Aterian itself:
The Neolithic revolution, which is the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, started in the Near East around 13,000 BCE. How human populations acquired agricultural and herding technologies has historically been the focus of a heated debate. Two opposing models can be applied to explain the Neolithic transition: the demic diffusion model and the cultural diffusion model. The first one argues that the Neolithic revolution involved the movement of people, in such a way that the arrival of agricultural and herding techniques was the result of the migration of farmers, who would admix with or replace previous hunter-gatherer populations. The other model proposes that the Neolithic transition was the result of the movement of ideas. In this scenario, local hunter-gatherer populations would acquire agricultural and herding technologies from neighbouring populations, without genetic admixture.
quote:On top of that, the oldest human stone tool cultures and continuous record of evolution of cultures from the Paleolithic to Neolithic is in the Nile Valley, but here this paper is proposing Morocco as a better location of study and representative of all North Africa which again is false.
The technological character of the Aterian has been debated for almost a century, but has until recently eluded definition. The problems defining the industry have related to its research history and the fact that a number of similarities have been observed between the Aterian and other North African stone tool industries of the same date. Levallois reduction is widespread across the whole of North Africa throughout the Middle Stone Age, and scrapers and denticulates are ubiquitous. Bifacial foliates moreover represent a huge taxonomic category and the form and dimension of such foliates associated with tanged tools is extremely varied. There is also a significant variation of tanged tools themselves, with various forms representing both different tool types (e.g., knives, scrapers, points) and the degree tool resharpening.
More recently, a large-scale study of North African stone tool assemblages, including Aterian assemblages, indicated that the traditional concept of stone tool industries is problematic in the North African Middle Stone Age. Although the term Aterian defines Middle Stone Age assemblages from North Africa with tanged tools, the concept of an Aterian industry obfuscates other similarities between tanged tool assemblages and other non-Aterian North African assemblages of the same date. For example, bifacial leaf points are found widely across North Africa in assemblages that lack tanged tools and Levallois flakes and cores are near ubiquitous. Instead of elaborating discrete industries, the findings of the comparative study suggest that North Africa during the Last Interglacial comprised a network of related technologies whose similarities and differences correlated with geographical distance and the palaeohydrology of a Green Sahara. Assemblages with tanged tools may therefore reflect particular activities involving the use of such tool types, and may not necessarily reflect a substantively different archaeological culture to others from the same period in North Africa. The findings are significant because they suggest that current archaeological nomenclatures do not reflect the true variability of the archaeological record of North Africa during the Middle Stone Age from the Last Interglacial, and hints at how early modern humans dispersed into previously uninhabitable environments. This notwithstanding, the term still usefully denotes the presence of tanged tools in North African Middle Stone Age assemblages.
quote:Regardless of what later Early Europeans looked like, but the biggest issue is the outright falsehoods implicit in the paper itself as I pointed out. Starting with the presence of any kind of European presence in Africa is putting the cart before the horse. And yes all of this is about downplaying Africa itself as the cradle of stone tools as the oldest stone tools in the world are found in Africa going back millions of years. Notice this article is within a larger journal called "Africa: the Cradle of Human Diversity", but what does that really mean, if they are focusing on LATER interactions between Europe and Africa, which contradicts the point. It can only be a cradle if such diversity in subsistence methods (ie. hunting, fishing, gathering, tool making, etc) first originated in Africa prior to anywhere else, which they did. But it sounds like they are simply muddying the waters by picking certain regions and time periods to focus on in making broad generalizations totally out of context.
Originally posted by Big O:
"The point here is that they are using morocco because of its proximity to Europe in order to fabricate the idea that stone tool technology evolution in Africa required migration and interaction with Europeans, which is blatantly false. First the problem starts with the Aterian itself:"
Honestly I don't think that it's even that much the fret about. We know that "Europeans" at the time were not even white. We are talking about the "Negroid" hunter and gatherers like the Grimaldi.
Early "Europeans" who carry "European genotypes"
![]()
quote:hahahah wtf what kind of paranoid post is that ? So now you'll refuse any paper on Morocco because it's close to Europe ? The paper literally said nothing about the origin of aterians nor did they say Iberomaurusians came from Europe.
Originally posted by Doug M:
[QB] Again, the problem with this paper is it proposes that the Aterian tool industry is the cradle of human stone tool culture in "North Africa" going back 30,000 years ago. And that this culture is supposedly centered in and around Morocco which of course is near to Europe. However, the problem with this is that the Aterian was NOT the epicenter of human stone tool culture in North Africa and never has been.
point here is that they are using morocco because of its proximity to Europe in order to fabricate the idea that stone tool technology evolution in Africa required migration and interaction with Europeans, which is blatantly false. First the problem starts with the Aterian itself:
[QUOTE]
The technological character of the Aterian has been debated for almost a century, but has until recently eluded definition. The problems defining the industry have related to its research history and the fact that a number of similarities have been observed between the Aterian and other North African stone tool industries of the same date. Levallois reduction is widespread across the whole of North Africa throughout the Middle Stone Age, and scrapers and denticulates are ubiquitous. Bifacial foliates moreover represent a huge taxonomic category and the form and dimension of such foliates associated with tanged tools is extremely varied. There is also a significant variation of tanged tools themselves, with various forms representing both different tool types (e.g., knives, scrapers, points) and the degree tool resharpening.
quote:https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/2712
The Aterian has been reported on the northern shores of Lake Chad for up to 25,000 years. It has been recognized south of the Tropic of Cancer (20th parallel), from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, from the Mediterranean to Chad, its industrial structure seems to have always preserved its technological constants and its stalk.
quote:There is nothing 'paranoid' about the fact that most of North Africa isn't close to Europe. Morocco is the closest point in Africa to Europe. There is no contiguous landmass connecting Europe to Africa directly. Therefore, any overlap in DNA between Europe and Africa in places like Morocco are not representative of all North Africans. This is the point I am making. "Berbers" don't all have the same DNA markers either and in ancient times Berber languages stretched from Senegal to Northern Sudan.
Originally posted by Antalas:
hahahah wtf what kind of paranoid post is that ? So now you'll refuse any paper on Morocco because it's close to Europe ? The paper literally said nothing about the origin of aterians nor did they say Iberomaurusians came from Europe.
quote:OK. And the people around lake Chad do not have the same DNA signature as those in Morocco. "North Africa" is not a monolithic cultural and genetic region. Again, they are trying to use Morocco as representative of all North Africa in ancient times when it is not and was not. During the last Saharan Wet Phase the Sahara was more densely populated at around the same time frame as this study. Those people did not have the same DNA lineages as those around Morocco. That is simply false and therefore using Morocco as a proxy for ALL of North Africa is simply false. Not to mention that within these countries like Tunisia and Algeria there is diversity within them from North to South. So this attempt to lump all these people into a single monoculture is nonsense.
Originally posted by Antalas:
And Aterian culture wasn't only found in Morocco :
quote:https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/2712
The Aterian has been reported on the northern shores of Lake Chad for up to 25,000 years. It has been recognized south of the Tropic of Cancer (20th parallel), from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, from the Mediterranean to Chad, its industrial structure seems to have always preserved its technological constants and its stalk.
quote:Yet that conclusion does not apply to the Nile Valley or Sahara and therefore is blatantly wrong in claiming this applies to "all of north Africa".
Ancient DNA obtained directly from hunter-gatherer and early farmer human remains from Morocco has provided the first paleogenomic evidence on the Neolithic transition in North Africa (Fregel et al., 2018, van de Loosdrecht et al., 2018). The picture drew from these studies points to a complex scenario where both cultural and demic diffusion led to the acquisition of farming and herding technologies. Upper Paleolithic and Early Neolithic populations in North Africa share the same genetic makeup, related to a back migration from Eurasia in Paleolithic times. This component is characterized by African autochthonous lineages U6 and M1 from the mitochondrial DNA and sublineages of E-M35 from the Y-chromosome. From a genome-wide perspective, Moroccan Upper Paleolithic and Early Neolithic populations are characterized by an autochthonous Maghrebi component still retained in present-day North Africans, following an east-to-west cline. Altogether, these results evidence that the early steps of farming and herding acquisition in North Africa happened through an in situ development process or mediated by the acculturation of local hunter-gatherer populations.
Late Neolithic individuals from Morocco are characterized by a mixture of both the autochthonous Maghrebi component and gene flow from early farmers in Europe. Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome lineages in North African Late Neolithic are different from those in previous periods and have a clear affiliation to early farmers in the Near East and Europe. Genome-wide data indicate that Late Neolithic communities in Morocco had a Neolithic European component, most probably related to the migration of early farmers from Iberia. Genetic evidence from the indigenous people of the Canary Islands suggests that the impact of the European Neolithic gene flow could have been heterogeneous and that additional European ancestry could have reached North Africa between the 4th millennium BCE and the 1st century CE, probably related to the expansion of the Bell-Beaker culture in the Mediterranean.
quote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabta_Playa
Archaeological findings may indicate human occupation in the region dating to at least somewhere around the 10th and 8th millennium BC. Fred Wendorf, the site's discoverer, and ethno-linguist Christopher Ehret have suggested that the people who occupied this region at that time were early pastoralists, or like the Saami practiced semi-pastoralism (although this is disputed by other sources because the cattle remains found at Nabta have been shown to be morphologically wild in several studies, and nearby Saharan sites such as Uan Afada in Libya were penning wild Barbary sheep, an animal that was never domesticated). The people of that time consumed and stored wild sorghum, and used ceramics adorned by complicated painted patterns created perhaps by using combs made from fish bone and which belong to a general pottery tradition strongly associated with the southern parts of the Sahara (e.g. of the Khartoum mesolithic and various contemporary sites in Chad) of that period.
quote:It's not a reason to avoid every paper based on Morocco, it's more easy for these europeans to investigate in easily reachable areas and in safe countries with welcoming authorities ...you really think such scientists will take the risk to go as far as the algerian sahara or Mauritania ? Moreover the culture of the taforalt remains was found all along the maghrebi mediterranean shore so it can give us a good overview of who these NW african hunter-gatherers were.
Originally posted by Doug M:
There is nothing 'paranoid' about the fact that most of North Africa isn't close to Europe. Morocco is the closest point in Africa to Europe. There is no contiguous landmass connecting Europe to Africa directly. Therefore, any overlap in DNA between Europe and Africa in places like Morocco are not representative of all North Africans. This is the point I am making. "Berbers" don't all have the same DNA markers either and in ancient times Berber languages stretched from Senegal to Northern Sudan.
quote:How do you know this if not a single aterian has been tested ? Morever the authors and I never implied north africa was monolithic but it would be quite anachronic to project the current or ancient state unto the paleolithic one. Like I said their culture is found all over the maghreb, and the remains are pretty much the same whether they are from tunisia or morocco so there is no reason to believe it was as diverse as today. Let's be happy with the datas we have for the moment.
Originally posted by Doug M: OK. And the people around lake Chad do not have the same DNA signature as those in Morocco. "North Africa" is not a monolithic cultural and genetic region. Again, they are trying to use Morocco as representative of all North Africa in ancient times when it is not and was not. During the last Saharan Wet Phase the Sahara was more densely populated at around the same time frame as this study. Those people did not have the same DNA lineages as those around Morocco. That is simply false and therefore using Morocco as a proxy for ALL of North Africa is simply false. Not to mention that within these countries like Tunisia and Algeria there is diversity within them from North to South. So this attempt to lump all these people into a single monoculture is nonsense.
quote:Come on you're really playing on semantics here simply because she used "north africa" instead of a more specific term. People aren't that dumb, they'll understand that paper is mostly focusing on Morocco. I've never seen someone using the taforalt/IAM results to draw conclusions about Egypt or the Sahara.
Originally posted by Doug M:
Yet that conclusion does not apply to the Nile Valley or Sahara and therefore is blatantly wrong in claiming this applies to "all of north Africa".
And to see how this is blatantly false one only needs to look at places like Nabta Playa where the evidence for the transition to the Neolithic is much better documented archaeologically. Yet somehow Fregel is claiming that Morocco is a better site to study to understand the transition than Nabta Playa.
quote:It is not all of North Africa and does not represent the history of tool making and animal domestication which have much earlier dates from places like Nabta Playa and Southern Libya. There is no amount of spinning that can make Morocco representative of all of North African history. It is not and there is no reason to try and pretend otherwise. They don't do this anywhere else in the world but in Africa they are quick to take a little bit of DNA and try and make broad conclusions that don't even make sense.
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:It's not a reason to avoid every paper based on Morocco, it's more easy for these europeans to investigate in easily reachable areas and in safe countries with welcoming authorities ...you really think such scientists will take the risk to go as far as the algerian sahara or Mauritania ? Moreover the culture of the taforalt remains was found all along the maghrebi mediterranean shore so it can give us a good overview of who these NW african hunter-gatherers were.
Originally posted by Doug M:
There is nothing 'paranoid' about the fact that most of North Africa isn't close to Europe. Morocco is the closest point in Africa to Europe. There is no contiguous landmass connecting Europe to Africa directly. Therefore, any overlap in DNA between Europe and Africa in places like Morocco are not representative of all North Africans. This is the point I am making. "Berbers" don't all have the same DNA markers either and in ancient times Berber languages stretched from Senegal to Northern Sudan.
It is representative since it would explain why all berbers have early european farmer ancestry (even fulanis got some of it) and these europeans could only take some specific roads.
quote:How do you know this if not a single aterian has been tested ? Morever the authors and I never implied north africa was monolithic but it would be quite anachronic to project the current or ancient state unto the paleolithic one. Like I said their culture is found all over the maghreb, and the remains are pretty much the same whether they are from tunisia or morocco so there is no reason to believe it was as diverse as today. Let's be happy with the datas we have for the moment.
Originally posted by Doug M: OK. And the people around lake Chad do not have the same DNA signature as those in Morocco. "North Africa" is not a monolithic cultural and genetic region. Again, they are trying to use Morocco as representative of all North Africa in ancient times when it is not and was not. During the last Saharan Wet Phase the Sahara was more densely populated at around the same time frame as this study. Those people did not have the same DNA lineages as those around Morocco. That is simply false and therefore using Morocco as a proxy for ALL of North Africa is simply false. Not to mention that within these countries like Tunisia and Algeria there is diversity within them from North to South. So this attempt to lump all these people into a single monoculture is nonsense.
quote:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10963-017-9112-9
The Combined Prehistoric Expedition argued and continues to argue (Jórdeczka et al. 2011, 2013) for the remains to be assigned domesticated status (Bos taurus), on the basis that the reconstructed ecological conditions were inadequate for aurochs to have been supported without human intervention and control. It was this argument, and the presence of early pottery, which led them to designate these earliest occupation layers ‘Neolithic’ (see Smith 1992, 2005, 2013 for a critique of the history and terminology). Their independent African domestication model hypothesised that these early Holocene cattle were brought from the Nile Valley, where there was adequate pasture and water, when the rains returned to the desert
quote:Doug you are on point. Europeans love to lie. They have taken North African Neanderthal remains and "re-named them AMH.
Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:Regardless of what later Early Europeans looked like, but the biggest issue is the outright falsehoods implicit in the paper itself as I pointed out. Starting with the presence of any kind of European presence in Africa is putting the cart before the horse. And yes all of this is about downplaying Africa itself as the cradle of stone tools as the oldest stone tools in the world are found in Africa going back millions of years. Notice this article is within a larger journal called "Africa: the Cradle of Human Diversity", but what does that really mean, if they are focusing on LATER interactions between Europe and Africa, which contradicts the point. It can only be a cradle if such diversity in subsistence methods (ie. hunting, fishing, gathering, tool making, etc) first originated in Africa prior to anywhere else, which they did. But it sounds like they are simply muddying the waters by picking certain regions and time periods to focus on in making broad generalizations totally out of context.
Originally posted by Big O:
"The point here is that they are using morocco because of its proximity to Europe in order to fabricate the idea that stone tool technology evolution in Africa required migration and interaction with Europeans, which is blatantly false. First the problem starts with the Aterian itself:"
Honestly I don't think that it's even that much the fret about. We know that "Europeans" at the time were not even white. We are talking about the "Negroid" hunter and gatherers like the Grimaldi.
Early "Europeans" who carry "European genotypes"
![]()
quote:It would be interesting to see the genome. And secondly, they used a new technic on the measurement to determent how old these remains are. Have they used the same methods on the previous findings?
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:The oldest human remains were found in Morocco
Originally posted by Doug M:
[QB] At face value this paper is garbage as it pushes many invalid talking points that don't make any sense. First it uses Morocco as the epicenter of "North Africa" when it is not now and never has been the primary "locus" of North African populations or cultural evolution.
There is no discussion of the Nile Valley,
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114
one could argue this is epicenter of all humanity, although it's a guess
_____________________________
As for the term "North Africa" used in anthropology I am against it and what you said here contributes to that
The geography of it can be defined in several not agreed upon ways.
I agree that the Maghreb should be considered different from the Eastern part which is oriented along a river system, the Nile
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114
"An earlier origin for H. sapiens is further supported by an ancient-DNA study posted to the bioRxiv preprint server on 5 June6. Researchers led by Mattias Jakobsson at Uppsala University in Sweden sequenced the genome of a boy who lived in South Africa around 2,000 years ago — only the second ancient genome from sub-Saharan Africa to be sequenced.
They determined that his ancestors on the H. sapiens lineage split from those of some other present-day African populations more than 260,000 years ago.
Hublin says his team tried and failed to obtain DNA from the Jebel Irhoud bones. A genomic analysis could have clearly established whether the remains lie on the lineage that leads to modern humans."
quote:Isn't it ironing how much adversity there was when the oldest AMH was considered to have come from East Africa. But now that we have the Jebel Irhoud remains, it all of a sudden is welcomed?
Originally posted by Antalas:
@Doug The oldest samples are from there and the iberomaurusian culture stretch from Morocco to Tunisia so it can give us a good view on these ancient populations who lived in North Africa.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114
More recently, researchers have suggested that the Jebel Irhoud humans were an ‘archaic’ species that survived in North Africa until H. sapiens from south of the Sahara replaced them.
East Africa is where most scientists place our species’ origins: two of the oldest known H. sapiens fossils — 196,000 and 160,000-year-old skulls 3,4 — come from Ethiopia, and DNA studies of present-day populations around the globe point to an African origin some 200,000 years ago5.
[…]
Remains from Morocco dated to 315,000 years ago push back our species' origins by 100,000 years — and suggest we didn't evolve only in East Africa.
“Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a ‘Garden of Eden’ that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, an author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Now, “I would say the Garden of Eden in Africa is probably Africa — and it’s a big, big garden.” Hublin was one of the leaders of the decade-long excavation at the Moroccan site, called Jebel Irhoud.
quote:Untill we understand that what we call Egypt now, came from the ancient progenitor called the Nile Valley culture, which stems from further down South, into Central Sudan.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Egypt is complex and constitutes its own world. Moreover it is geopolitically considered as part of the middle east not North africa :
![]()
quote:I don't understand, What exactly is to you try to prove?
Originally posted by Antalas:
And yes these studies about iberomaurusians and late neolithic moroccans can be really useful since such components are present among most if not all modern berbers. These studies show that modern north africans have retained 30-50% of mesolithic ancestry related to Iberomaurusians and 30-50% early european farmer ancestry which is explained by these late neolithic migrations to "morocco".
quote:(Abdelhafidh Hajje, The genetic heterogeneity of Arab populations as inferred from HLA genes, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192269)
First, this relatedness is attributed to the Berber migration from the African Sahara northwards in 10000–4000 BC, because of hyper-arid conditions [69
quote:(Sabeh Frigi et al.,Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations, Human Biology, Volume 82, Number 4, August 2010, pp. 367-384)
Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa.
quote:(S Triki-Fendri, A Rebai 2015, Synthetic review on the genetic relatedness between North Africa and Arabia deduced from paternal lineage distributions)
Firstly, E-M81 is the most common haplogroup in North Africa showing its highest concentrations in Northwestern Africa (76 % in Saharawis in Morocco (Arredi et al., 2004)) with cline frequencies decreasing eastward: Algeria (45 %), Libya (34 %) and Egypt (10 %) (Robino et al., 2008; Triki-Fendri et al., submitted; Arredi et al., 2004).
Besides, Ottoni et al., (2011) have reported that E-M81 appear to constitute a common paternal genetic matrix in the Tuareg populations where it was encountered at high frequency (89 %).
Hence, the distribution of this haplogroup in Africa closely matches the present area of Berber-speaking population’s allocation on the continent, suggesting a close haplogroup-ethnic group parallelism (Bosch et al., 2001; Cruciani et al., 2002; 2004; Arredi et al., 2004; Fadhlaoui-Zid et al., 2011; Bekada et al., 2013). However, knowing that the Berber dialects have been replaced by Arabic in North African populations, carriers of E-M81 haplogroup are currently Arab-speaking peoples whose ancestors were Berber-speaking.
Outside of Africa, E-M81 is almost absent in the Middle East and in Europe (with the exception of Iberia and Sicily). The presence of E-M81 in the Iberian Peninsula (12 % in southern Portugal) (Cruciani et al., 2004) has been attributed to trans-Mediterranean contacts linked to the Islamic influence, since it is typically Berber (Bosch et al., 2001; Semino et al., 2004; Beleza et al., 2006; Alvarez et al., 2009; Cruciani et al., 2007; Trombetta et al., 2011).
quote:(Beniamino Trombetta, Fulvio Cruciani et al. (2011), A New Topology of the Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup E1b1 (E-P2) Revealed through the Use of Newly Characterized Binary Polymorphisms)
Within E-M35, there are striking parallels between two haplogroups, E-V68 and E-V257. Both contain a lineage which has been frequently observed in Africa (E-M78 and E-M81, respectively) [6], [8], [10], [13]–[16] and a group of undifferentiated chromosomes that are mostly found in southern Europe (Table S2). An expansion of E-M35 carriers, possibly from the Middle East as proposed by other Authors [14], and split into two branches separated by the geographic barrier of the Mediterranean Sea, would explain this geographic pattern. However, the absence of E-V68* and E-V257* in the Middle East (Table S2) makes a maritime spread between northern Africa and southern Europe a more plausible hypothesis. A detailed analysis of the Y chromosomal microsatellite variation associated with E-V68 and E-V257 could help in gaining a better understanding of the likely timing and place of origin of these two haplogroups.
quote:I don't understand why you bring this.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
Isn't it ironing how much adversity there was when the oldest AMH was considered to have come from East Africa. But now that we have the Jebel Irhoud remains, it all of a sudden is welcomed?
I think the most disappointing part is the following:
[QUOTE][i]More recently, researchers have suggested that the Jebel Irhoud humans were an ‘archaic’ species that survived in North Africa until H. sapiens from south of the Sahara replaced them.
East Africa is where most scientists place our species’ origins: two of the oldest known H. sapiens fossils — 196,000 and 160,000-year-old skulls 3,4 — come from Ethiopia, and DNA studies of present-day populations around the globe point to an African origin some 200,000 years ago5.
[…]
Remains from Morocco dated to 315,000 years ago push back our species' origins by 100,000 years — and suggest we didn't evolve only in East Africa.
“Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a ‘Garden of Eden’ that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, an author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Now, “I would say the Garden of Eden in Africa is probably Africa — and it’s a big, big garden.” Hublin was one of the leaders of the decade-long excavation at the Moroccan site, called Jebel Irhoud.
quote:There wasn't one Nile Valley culture only and you forget eastern saharans too.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Untill we understand that what we call Egypt now, came from the ancient progenitor called the Nile Valley culture, which stems from further down South, into Central Sudan.
quote:And I don't understand why you brought all of this while I was speaking about autosomal composition. I was talking about this :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: I don't understand, What exactly is to you try to prove?
quote:https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6774
By 3,000 BCE, a continuity in the Neolithic spread brought Mediterranean-like ancestry to the Maghreb, most likely from Iberia. Other archaeological remains, such as African elephant ivory and ostrich eggs found in Iberian sites, confirm the existence of contacts and exchange networks through both sides of the Gibraltar strait at this time. Our analyses strongly support that at least some of the European ancestry observed today in North Africa is related to prehistoric migrations, and local Berber populations were already admixed with Europeans before the Roman conquest. Furthermore, additional European/Iberian ancestry could have reached the Maghreb after KEB people; this scenario is supported by the presence of Iberian-like Bell-Beaker pottery in more recent stratigraphic layers of IAM and KEB caves. Future paleogenomic efforts in North Africa will further disentangle the complex history of migrations that forged the ancestry of the admixed populations we observe today."
quote:You have a quote here form article about cattle domestication. The final paragraph says " Middle Euphrates Valley. "
Originally posted by Doug M:
And the issue here is more of downplaying the fact that Africa has a long history of the gradual evolution towards agriculture without any interaction from elsewhere. We know that there are plenty of sites where there are tens of thousands of years of history that can be studied, yet they focused on Morocco for what reason? Those sites are not in morocco. Or at least they haven't been found.
quote:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10963-017-9112-9
The Combined Prehistoric Expedition argued and continues to argue (Jórdeczka et al. 2011, 2013) for the remains to be assigned domesticated status (Bos taurus), on the basis that the reconstructed ecological conditions were inadequate for aurochs to have been supported without human intervention and control. It was this argument, and the presence of early pottery, which led them to designate these earliest occupation layers ‘Neolithic’ (see Smith 1992, 2005, 2013 for a critique of the history and terminology). Their independent African domestication model hypothesised that these early Holocene cattle were brought from the Nile Valley, where there was adequate pasture and water, when the rains returned to the desert
The main difference here is that Africa evolved towards agriculture with pottery from a very early time, as they gradually developed techniques to try and tame various indigenous animal species and plants. While in the "Near East" the rise of animal and plant domestication was without pottery. You cannot just skip over the history of evolution towards domestication in Africa and assume that everything just popped up in the "Near East" or Europe and simply was transported to Africa lock stock and barrel. African pottery predates Bell Beaker pottery by many thousands of years. That is a vast oversimplification of tens of thousands of years of history.
[/QB]
quote:The topic was about Jebel Irhoud, wasn't it?
Originally posted by Antalas:
I don't understand why you bring this.
quote:How many were there in Northeast Africa, according to you?
Originally posted by Antalas:
I don't understand why you bring this.
There wasn't one Nile Valley culture only and you forget eastern saharans too.
quote:Just wondering.
Originally posted by Antalas:
And I don't understand why you brought all of this while I was speaking about autosomal composition. I was talking about this
quote:I haven't been in on this for a while. I have to be updated.
Originally posted by Antalas:
By 3,000 BCE, a continuity in the Neolithic spread brought Mediterranean-like ancestry to the Maghreb, most likely from Iberia.
quote:Of course there is, the Greeks arrived before the Romans. And the story of Romulus and Remus is confirmed here.
Our analyses strongly support that at least some of the European ancestry observed today in North Africa is related to prehistoric migrations, and local Berber populations were already admixed with Europeans before the Roman conquest.
quote:Unfortunately the table doesn't show the Tuareg. Perhaps they fall under the North and Saharawi in general?
However, Late Neolithic individuals from North Africa are admixed, with a North African and a European component.
quote:https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/europeans-had-dark-skin-blue-eyes-7-000-years-ago-1.2512465
Europeans had dark skin, blue eyes 7,000 years ago
"The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin," Lalueza-Fox said.
quote:https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36150502
"Analysis of genes carried by Ice Age Europeans shows, among other things, that they had dark complexions and brown eyes. Only after 14,000 years ago did blue eyes begin to spread, and pale skin only appeared across much of the continent after 7,000 years ago - borne by early farmers from the Near East."
quote:https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/first-modern-britons-dark-black-skin-cheddar-man-dna-analysis-reveals
"The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed."
quote:Population history of North Africa based on modern and ancient genomes
Compared with the rest of the African continent, North Africa has provided limited genomic data. Nonetheless, the genetic data available show a complex demographic scenario characterized by extensive admixture and drift. Despite the continuous gene flow from the Middle East, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, an autochthonous genetic component that dates back to pre-Holocene times is still present in North African groups. The comparison of ancient and modern genomes has evidenced a genetic continuity in the region since Epipaleolithic times. Later population movements, especially the gene flow from the Middle East associated with the Neolithic, have diluted the genetic autochthonous component, creating an east to west gradient. Recent historical movements, such as the Arabization, have also contributed to the genetic landscape observed currently in North Africa and have culturally transformed the region. Genome analyses have not shown evidence of a clear correlation between cultural and genetic diversity in North Africa, as there is no genetic pattern of differentiation between Tamazight (i.e. Berber) and Arab speakers as a whole. Besides the gene flow received from neighboring areas, the analysis of North African genomes has shown that the region has also acted as a source of gene flow since ancient times. As a result of the genetic uniqueness of North African groups and the lack of available data, there is an urgent need for the study of genetic variation in the region and its implications in health and disease.
quote:Chapter 7 Paleogenomics of the Neolithic Transition in North Africa
Although useful to get a glimpse of the genetic history of a certain population, studies based on modern DNA variation are usually not suited for disentangling complex migration patterns. As several layers of migration have affected North Africa at different periods, recent human movements can erase or distort more ancient admixture signals. In these cases, obtaining ancient DNA from archaeological remains is more appropriate because it allows us to directly examining how the population changed through time. Because the two competing models proposed to explain the acquisition of farming technologies are based on either the existence or the absence of genetic admixture, ancient DNA analysis is a powerful tool to study the Neolithic transition. The reasoning behind this approach is quite simple: if the genetic composition of human remains from hunter-gatherers and farmers is similar, then the Neolithic transition happened through the movement of ideas rather than genes; on the other hand, if hunter-gatherers and early farmers are genetically different, then the spread of farming required the movement of people.
[…]
Genetic evidence from the indigenous people of the Canary Islands suggests that the impact of the European Neolithic gene flow could have been heterogeneous and that additional European ancestry could have reached North Africa between the 4th millennium BCE and the 1st century CE, probably related to the expansion of the Bell-Beaker culture in the Mediterranean.
Compared to ancient DNA evidence in Europe, our understanding of the genetic composition of prehistoric populations of North Africa is just a crude draft. Our present knowledge is only based on two specific archaeological sites from Morocco that are not representative of the whole North African region. Additional paleogenomics evidence from different archaeological sites from both western and eastern North Africa will be needed to comprehend the nuances of Neolithic transition on this region and the human movements that shaped Berber populations.
quote:no...
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
The topic was about Jebel Irhoud, wasn't it?
quote:Depends which period you want to look at
Originally posted by Ish Geber: How many were there in Northeast Africa, according to you?
quote:??? ..ok
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Just wondering.
quote:none of what you said and posted actually adressed this.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: How is this any different from what I posted? If anything it confirmed it.
quote:Greeks only settled in cyrenaica not NW Africa and the authors were talking about late neolithic Morocco not VIth BC eastern libya. Moreover I don't see why you bring romulus and remus here ??
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Of course there is, the Greeks arrived before the Romans. And the story of Romulus and Remus is confirmed here.
quote:We actually do have some tuaregs here :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Unfortunately the table doesn't show the Tuareg. Perhaps they fall under the North and Saharawi in general?
quote:Yes but we're not talking about these europeans. We're talking about early european farmers not western hunter-gatherers and the former had SNPs for light skin :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Europeans had dark skin, blue eyes 7,000 years ago
"The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin," Lalueza-Fox said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/europeans-had-dark-skin-blue-eyes-7-000-years-ago-1.2512465
"Analysis of genes carried by Ice Age Europeans shows, among other things, that they had dark complexions and brown eyes. Only after 14,000 years ago did blue eyes begin to spread, and pale skin only appeared across much of the continent after 7,000 years ago - borne by early farmers from the Near East."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36150502
"The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/first-modern-britons-dark-black-skin-cheddar-man-dna-analysis-reveals
quote:https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6774#sec-1
On the other hand, KEB individuals exhibit some European-derived alleles that predispose individuals to lighter skin and eye color, including those on genes SLC24A5 (rs1426654) and OCA2 (rs1800401) (SI Appendix, Supplementary Note 11).
quote:OK, I was under the assumption this was was mentioned?
Originally posted by Antalas:
no...
quote:What do you mean.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Depends which period you want to look at
quote:I haven't been in on this for a while. I have to be updated.
Originally posted by Antalas:
??? ..ok
quote:It did shows North Africans going Into the Mediterranean.
Originally posted by Antalas:
none of what you said and posted actually adressed this.
quote:What is the population they connect to the late neolithic Morocco
Originally posted by Antalas:
Greeks only settled in cyrenaica not NW Africa and the authors were talking about late neolithic Morocco not VIth BC eastern libya. Moreover I don't see why you bring romulus and remus here ??
quote:Ok, thanks.
Originally posted by Antalas:
We actually do have some tuaregs here :
quote:Ok, I see a lot has changed throughout the last few years. I haven't followed these trends and latest papers, within the last few years. I have to read into the Kelif el Boroud (KEB) site.
Originally posted by Antalas:
We actually do have some tuaregs here :
Yes but we're not talking about these europeans. We're talking about early european farmers not western hunter-gatherers and the former had SNPs for light skin :
quote:In order for people to "go back" they must have come from that place to begin with, correct?
Originally posted by Antalas:
It's just a synthesis of what we already know basically IBMs being the product of back migrations, long continuity in the region as seen with IAM and late neolithic european migration.
quote:This part is interesting.
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:Come on you're really playing on semantics here simply because she used "north africa" instead of a more specific term. People aren't that dumb, they'll understand that paper is mostly focusing on Morocco. I've never seen someone using the taforalt/IAM results to draw conclusions about Egypt or the Sahara.
Originally posted by Doug M:
Yet that conclusion does not apply to the Nile Valley or Sahara and therefore is blatantly wrong in claiming this applies to "all of north Africa".
And to see how this is blatantly false one only needs to look at places like Nabta Playa where the evidence for the transition to the Neolithic is much better documented archaeologically. Yet somehow Fregel is claiming that Morocco is a better site to study to understand the transition than Nabta Playa.
quote:https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6774#sec-1
IAM people did not possess any of the European SNPs associated with light pigmentation, and most likely had dark skin and eyes.
quote:https://brill.com/view/book/9789004500228/BP000019.xml?language=en
Ancient DNA obtained directly from hunter-gatherer and early farmer human remains from Morocco has provided the first paleogenomic evidence on the Neolithic transition in North Africa (Fregel et al., 2018, van de Loosdrecht et al., 2018).
quote:(Marieke van de Loosdrecht, Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations)
"For the Taforalt individuals to be considered as being Basal Eurasians, we expect that their genomes do not share significantly more alleles with the Neanderthal genome than that sub- Saharan Africans do."
quote:Not by me or the paper
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
OK, I was under the assumption this was was mentioned?
quote:paleolithic,meso, neolithic, etc
Originally posted by Ish Geber: What do you mean.
quote:alright
Originally posted by Ish Geber: I haven't been in on this for a while. I have to be updated.
quote:what do you mean by this ?
Originally posted by Ish Geber: It did shows North Africans going Into the Mediterranean.
quote:They talked about early european farmers of Iberia (TOR in the paper) and do you have any source regarding romulus and remus I've never heard of this.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: What is the population they connect to the late neolithic Morocco
The ancestral story of romulus and remus acknowledges to have moved into North Africa. That is why I brought it up.
quote:Alright no problem
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Ok, I see a lot has changed throughout the last few years. I haven't followed these trends and latest papers, within the last few years. I have to read into the Kelif el Boroud (KEB) site.
quote:Which trends ?
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Interesting to see how things have molded. Especially with the trends going on on social media. These trends seem to aline with "scientific discoveries".
Reich certainly has been busy.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/exd.14142
quote:It's more of an expression because the people who went back weren't necessarily similar to the people who first left Africa. Moreover don't forget the timeframe, we are talking about different back migrations at different periods.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
In order for people to "go back" they must have come from that place to begin with, correct?
What are the archeological findings that correlate with this history? [/QB]
quote:Yes they looked like this :
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
This part is interesting.
quote:https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6774#sec-1
IAM people did not possess any of the European SNPs associated with light pigmentation, and most likely had dark skin and eyes.
quote:???
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Could that explain this:
quote:https://brill.com/view/book/9789004500228/BP000019.xml?language=en
Ancient DNA obtained directly from hunter-gatherer and early farmer human remains from Morocco has provided the first paleogenomic evidence on the Neolithic transition in North Africa (Fregel et al., 2018, van de Loosdrecht et al., 2018).
quote:Yes but they actually do :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: If I am not mistaking Loosdrecht et al., 2018 explained the following:
quote:(Marieke van de Loosdrecht, Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations)
"For the Taforalt individuals to be considered as being Basal Eurasians, we expect that their genomes do not share significantly more alleles with the Neanderthal genome than that sub- Saharan Africans do."
quote:https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6774
This suggests that most of IAM ancestry originates from an out-of-Africa source, as IAM shares more alleles with Levantines than with any sub-Saharan Africans, including the 4,500-y-old genome from Ethiopia (14). To further test the hypothesis that IAM is more closely related to out-of-Africa populations, we determined whether we could detect Neanderthal ancestry in IAM, which is typical of non-African populations. A signal of Neanderthal ancestry has been detected in modern North African populations (26). A lack of Neanderthal ancestry in IAM would imply that the signal observed today is a product of more recent migration into North Africa from the Middle East and Europe in historical times. Compared with the Neanderthal high coverage genome sequence from Altai (27) and the low-coverage sequence from Vindija Cave (28), and using the S statistic (24), we detected a Neanderthal introgression signal into IAM, suggesting derivation from the same event shared by non-African populations (SI Appendix, Supplementary Note 10).
quote:https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02919786/document
Results.
Our results reveal a geographic localization of two different lactase persistence variants in the Sahel: 13910*T west of Lake Chad (Fulani and Tuareg pastoralists) and 13915*G east of there (mostly Arabic-speaking pastoralists). We show that 13910*T has a more diversified haplotype background among the Fulani than among the Tuareg and that the age estimate for expansion of this variant among the Fulani (~8.5 ka) corresponds to introduction of cattle to the area.
Conclusions.
This is the first study showing that the 'Eurasian' lactase persistence allele 13910*T is widespread both in northern Europe and in the Sahel, where it is, however, limited to pastoralists. Since the Fulani haplotype with 13910*T is shared with contemporary Eurasians, its origin could be in a region encompassing the Near East and northeastern Africa in a population ancestral to both Saharan pastoralists and European farmers.
quote:Where in the paper does it says it started in NW Africa ? Moreover the Sahel isn't a north african region.
Originally posted by Doug M:
The bottom line point I am making is that the Neolithic transition in Africa took place first in the Sahara and Nile Valley. This is supported clearly by current archeology including earliest evidence towards cattle domestication, harvesting wild grains at Wadi Kubbaniya, coralling wild goats in the Sahara, the evidence from Nabta Playa and so forth. And along with that came the early rock art, early pottery and other technologies related to fishing and hunting. To claim that this transition started in North West Africa is false. Period.
quote:https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02919786/document
Results.
Our results reveal a geographic localization of two different lactase persistence variants in the Sahel: 13910*T west of Lake Chad (Fulani and Tuareg pastoralists) and 13915*G east of there (mostly Arabic-speaking pastoralists). We show that 13910*T has a more diversified haplotype background among the Fulani than among the Tuareg and that the age estimate for expansion of this variant among the Fulani (~8.5 ka) corresponds to introduction of cattle to the area.
Conclusions.
This is the first study showing that the 'Eurasian' lactase persistence allele 13910*T is widespread both in northern Europe and in the Sahel, where it is, however, limited to pastoralists. Since the Fulani haplotype with 13910*T is shared with contemporary Eurasians, its origin could be in a region encompassing the Near East and northeastern Africa in a population ancestral to both Saharan pastoralists and European farmers.
The key is that the rise of pastoralism does not require domestication of cattle. It is more of an evolutionary behavior and the facts are that hunted wild cattle were kept along with other wild beasts by Africans as part of survival strategy long before the rise of farming. But this gets downplayed in the discussion ignoring the fact that the ability to coral and cage wild animals is a key activity during later neolithic farming.
quote:What is the title of the article and where in that article does it discuss evidences from outside Morocco?
Originally posted by Antalas:
Where in the paper does it says it started in NW Africa ? Moreover the Sahel isn't a north african region.
quote:Have you at least paid attention to their conclusion ? This is what they say :
Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:What is the title of the article and where in that article does it discuss evidences from outside Morocco?
Originally posted by Antalas:
Where in the paper does it says it started in NW Africa ? Moreover the Sahel isn't a north african region.
quote:So they are well aware it isn't necessarily representative but at least with the little informations we have, we can already have a glimpse of what happened in North-West Africa.
Compared to ancient DNA evidence in Europe, our understanding of the genetic composition of prehistoric populations of North Africa is just a crude draft. Our present knowledge is only based on two specific archaeological sites from Morocco that are not representative of the whole North African region. Additional paleogenomics evidence from different archaeological sites from both western and eastern North Africa will be needed to comprehend the nuances of Neolithic transition on this region and the human movements that shaped Berber populations.
quote:You do agree it's a complete imagination by the artist Elisabeth Daynes, do you? Here is more of her work link.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Yes they looked like this :
quote:It's in referce to the van de Loosdrecht et al., 2018 paper.
Originally posted by Antalas:
???
quote:The paper you cite is very interesting, I wonder how it correlates with these previous findings.
Originally posted by Antalas:
This suggests that most of IAM ancestry originates from an out-of-Africa source, as IAM shares more alleles with Levantines than with any sub-Saharan Africans, including the 4,500-y-old genome from Ethiopia (14). To further test the hypothesis that IAM is more closely related to out-of-Africa populations, we determined whether we could detect Neanderthal ancestry in IAM, which is typical of non-African populations. A signal of Neanderthal ancestry has been detected in modern North African populations (26). A lack of Neanderthal ancestry in IAM would imply that the signal observed today is a product of more recent migration into North Africa from the Middle East and Europe in historical times. Compared with the Neanderthal high coverage genome sequence from Altai (27) and the low-coverage sequence from Vindija Cave (28), and using the S statistic (24), we detected a Neanderthal introgression signal into IAM, suggesting derivation from the same event shared by non-African populations (SI Appendix, Supplementary Note 10).
quote:(Dibble HL et al., On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, J Hum Evol. 2013 Mar;64(3):194-210. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.10.010. Epub 2013 Feb 9.)
For the most part, it has been the stone artifacts that have been used as the principal criteria for classifying assemblages into one or the other of these sets of terms. But beyond the lithic evidence are the potentially symbolic behaviors in the MSA as suggested by the perforated Nassarius shells, engraved ochre and ostrich eggshells, the unequivocal use of ochre, compound adhesives, bone tools, etc. (e.g., Henshilwood et al., 2001, 2004, 2009; d’Errico et al., 2005, 2009; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d’Errico and Henshilwood, 2007; Wadley, 2007; Backwell et al., 2008).
The Atero-Mousterian assemblages include some of these features as well, including Nas-sarius shells, such as those found at Oued Djebbana, Ifri n’Ammar, Rhafas, Taforalt, and Contrebandiers Cave (Vanhaeren et al., 2006; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d’Errico et al., 2009; Nami and Moser, 2010; Dibble et al., 2012). When the characterization of the Atero-Mousterian is broadened beyond the lithic artifacts to include these other traits, and given that the tanged pieces themselves represent a distinct and innovative technological feature, the overall nature of the Atero-Mousterian fits well into the kinds of variability seen in other MSA industries of East and southern Africa.
North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two 'industries' are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.
quote:(Robert A. Foley er al., The Middle Stone Age of the Central Sahara: Biogeographical opportunities and technological strategies in later human evolution)
Originally, the Aterian was considered to be the final phase of the local Mousterian/Middle Palaeolithic tradition, and thus mostly younger than 40 ka. Current data support a more asynchronous view. Integrating new dates for the sites of El Harhoura and El Mnasra with those from other sites published recently (Barton et al., 2009; Richter et al., 2010; Schwenninger et al., 2010; Jacobs et al., 2011) suggest an older chronology, with a range of between 112 and 50 ka. Sub-divisions within the Aterian have been also recognized for some time, but based entirely on typology (Ruhlmann, 1945; Antoine, 1950a, b; Balout, 1955; Roche, 1969). Recently, Jacobs et al. (2012) proposed four phases to the MP/Aterian history in the Maghreb:
The traditional interpretation has been that the Aterian represents a local facies of the North African Mousterian, sometimes described as an ‘evolved Mousterian’ (Tixier, 1959; Balout, 1965), or as an ‘Epi- Mousterian’ (Bordes, 1961). From a technological perspective, the characterization of the generalized North African MP/MSA is not simple. Techno-typological definitions of the non-Aterian MP/MSA industries in the Maghreb are unclear: Aumassip (2001) suggests a relative rarity of retouched tools and a relatively high frequency of sidescrapers, while for others abundant and diversified side- scrapers mainly produced on Levallois blanks are what characterize non-Aterian MP/MSA assemblages in the area (Wengler, 2010: 68). However, non-Aterian regional variation in the MSA is high. Aumassip (2004) identifies a number of traditions within a scheme of Mousterian variation very similar to European Mousterian facies e (a) Mousterian of Acheulean tradition, rich in small bifaces and Levallois debitage, frequent in Morocco and the Maghrebian Sahara; (b) Denticulate Mousterian in Egypt and the Maghreb, rich in denticulates and notches; (c) Typical Mousterian across North Africa; (d) Ferrassie-type Mousterian in the Maghreb, rich in scrapers and points and without bifaces; (e) Nubian Mousterian in Egypt and Sudan, characterized by the Levallois production of Nubian points, as well as (f) the Khormusan, a distinct facies of the Sudanese record (Marks, 1968; Goder-Goldeger, 2013). However, Aumassip’s classification of the non-Aterian MP/MSA of North Africa has been criticized on the grounds that it uses a European rather than African framework, and specifically excludes a number of sites from this North African ‘Mousterian’ variation e those described by Clark and others as ‘Middle Stone Age’ in Niger and Mali, and a set of very localized industries, such as those from M’zab and Dede in Algeria. To these, one could add the Pre-Aurignacian of Cyrenaica (McBurney, 1967). This highlights the point made earlier, that to understand the Aterian and its relationship to the MSA requires a broader comparative approach to technology, and that comparative framework must be Africa.
Aterian origins have usually been thought to lie in the Maghreb (Debčnath et al., 1986; Pasty, 1997), although this view has been strongly criticized (Kleindienst, 1998: 8). Alternative origins have been suggested in sub-Saharan Africa, pointing to affinities with industries with foliates, such as the Lupemban and Sangoan (Caton- Thompson, 1946; Clark, 1982, 2008; Kleindienst, 1998; Wengler, 2010; Garcea, 2012). Sub-Saharan links are pertinent, since all human fossil remains found in association with the Aterian are those of H. sapiens, thus representing one of the main regional early human populations of Africa prior to the colonization of Eurasia.
We would argue that the Central Sahara occupies a pivotal place in the origins and dispersals of modern humans, and that the MSA of Africa is the context in which we should be developing hypotheses. Following the re-dating of key Maghrebian sites, the recognition of the North African MSA diversity, and of its place within a broader complex of Mode 3 African industries, the Aterian could be considered as one among several MSA traditions that may have existed in North Africa.
Although these need chronological definition, MSA-making hominins could have occupied North Africa and the Sahara during several wet phases, both before and after MIS5, while the expansion of the Aterian during this latter period is consistent with the expansion of modern humans, and MSA sites and traditions, throughout Africa. Furthermore, Aterian and non-Aterian MSA assemblages are temporally interstratified at certain sites as Ifri N’Ammar in Morocco (Mikdad and Eiwanger, 2000; Jacobs et al., 2011) or El Guettar in Tunisia (Aouadi- Abdeljaouad and Belhouchet, 2008, 2012). Such dynamic demographic responses to changes in socio-ecological environments have been mapped in other MSA traditions of Africa, such as the Howieson’s Poort (Jacobs et al., 2008).
quote:(Fernando L. et al., The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes - April 2016)
This is ∼2.1 (95% CI: 1.7–2.9) times longer than the TMRCA of A00 and other extant modern human Y-chromosome lineages. This estimate suggests that the Y-chromosome divergence mirrors the population divergence of Neandertals and modern human ancestors, and it refutes alternative scenarios of a relatively recent or super-archaic origin of Neandertal Y chromosomes.
quote:(Michael F. Hammer Fernando L. Mendez et al., An African American Paternal Lineage Adds an Extremely Ancient Root to the Human Y Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree)
Genotyping of a DNA sample that was submitted to a commercial genetic-testing facility demonstrated that the Y chromosome of this African American individual carried the ancestral state of all known Y chromosome SNPs. To further characterize this lineage, which we dubbed A00 (see Figure S1, available online, for proposed nomenclature), we sequenced multiple regions (totaling ∼240 kb) of the X-degenerate portion of this chromosome, as well as a subset of these regions (∼180 kb) on a chromosome belonging to the previously known basal lineage A1b (which we rename here as A0).
quote:(New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens)
"old and an African form of Neanderthals"
quote:https://www.marres.education/haplogroups.htm
Neanderthals
code:A000T A8835
A000 A10805
A000a A21565
A000b A10801
A000b1 A10765
A00-T PR2921
quote:(Rene J. Herrera, Ralph Garcia-Bertrand
Recent data on Y chromosomes by Mendez et al 43 found evidence to support a model that placed the Neanderthal lineage as an outgroup to the modern human Y chromosomes, including A00,...
quote:(Fernando L.Mendez, The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes)
Recurrent Mutations
Four mutations were inconsistent with tree ii in Figure 1A. Non-A0 lineages in the 1000 Genomes panel34 share the reference allele at coordinate 2,710,154, and individuals in haplogroups B through T share the reference allele at 23,558,260. The two others were at coordinates 9,386,241 and 15,024,530.
quote:What would be the point of doing it based on "imagination" ? And if it was imagination why do the daynes studio wrote this :
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
You do agree it's a complete imagination by the artist Elisabeth Daynes, do you?
quote:and this is the description they give :
No use in any context outside of mainstream science without the express permission of Atelier Daynes.
quote:The point is to show how these people looked like not to just invent new faces lol
Reconstruction of a Mechta-Afalou head based on fossils found at Afalou in Algeria (1967). These fossils date from 25,000 to 8,000 years ago.
quote:I don't understand why you post all of this ?? Are you aware IAM are not aterians or mousterians ? And jebel irhoud are not neanderthals, they only had neanderthal-like traits but overall they show links to homo sapiens sapiens (which is why it is now considered "proto-homo sapiens") :
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
quote:(Dibble HL et al., On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, J Hum Evol. 2013 Mar;64(3):194-210. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.10.010. Epub 2013 Feb 9.)
For the most part, it has been the stone artifacts that have been used as the principal criteria for classifying assemblages into one or the other of these sets of terms. But beyond the lithic evidence are the potentially symbolic behaviors in the MSA as suggested by the perforated Nassarius shells, engraved ochre and ostrich eggshells, the unequivocal use of ochre, compound adhesives, bone tools, etc. (e.g., Henshilwood et al., 2001, 2004, 2009; d’Errico et al., 2005, 2009; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d’Errico and Henshilwood, 2007; Wadley, 2007; Backwell et al., 2008).
The Atero-Mousterian assemblages include some of these features as well, including Nas-sarius shells, such as those found at Oued Djebbana, Ifri n’Ammar, Rhafas, Taforalt, and Contrebandiers Cave (Vanhaeren et al., 2006; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d’Errico et al., 2009; Nami and Moser, 2010; Dibble et al., 2012). When the characterization of the Atero-Mousterian is broadened beyond the lithic artifacts to include these other traits, and given that the tanged pieces themselves represent a distinct and innovative technological feature, the overall nature of the Atero-Mousterian fits well into the kinds of variability seen in other MSA industries of East and southern Africa.
North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two 'industries' are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.
quote:(Robert A. Foley er al., The Middle Stone Age of the Central Sahara: Biogeographical opportunities and technological strategies in later human evolution)
Originally, the Aterian was considered to be the final phase of the local Mousterian/Middle Palaeolithic tradition, and thus mostly younger than 40 ka. Current data support a more asynchronous view. Integrating new dates for the sites of El Harhoura and El Mnasra with those from other sites published recently (Barton et al., 2009; Richter et al., 2010; Schwenninger et al., 2010; Jacobs et al., 2011) suggest an older chronology, with a range of between 112 and 50 ka. Sub-divisions within the Aterian have been also recognized for some time, but based entirely on typology (Ruhlmann, 1945; Antoine, 1950a, b; Balout, 1955; Roche, 1969). Recently, Jacobs et al. (2012) proposed four phases to the MP/Aterian history in the Maghreb:
The traditional interpretation has been that the Aterian represents a local facies of the North African Mousterian, sometimes described as an ‘evolved Mousterian’ (Tixier, 1959; Balout, 1965), or as an ‘Epi- Mousterian’ (Bordes, 1961). From a technological perspective, the characterization of the generalized North African MP/MSA is not simple. Techno-typological definitions of the non-Aterian MP/MSA industries in the Maghreb are unclear: Aumassip (2001) suggests a relative rarity of retouched tools and a relatively high frequency of sidescrapers, while for others abundant and diversified side- scrapers mainly produced on Levallois blanks are what characterize non-Aterian MP/MSA assemblages in the area (Wengler, 2010: 68). However, non-Aterian regional variation in the MSA is high. Aumassip (2004) identifies a number of traditions within a scheme of Mousterian variation very similar to European Mousterian facies e (a) Mousterian of Acheulean tradition, rich in small bifaces and Levallois debitage, frequent in Morocco and the Maghrebian Sahara; (b) Denticulate Mousterian in Egypt and the Maghreb, rich in denticulates and notches; (c) Typical Mousterian across North Africa; (d) Ferrassie-type Mousterian in the Maghreb, rich in scrapers and points and without bifaces; (e) Nubian Mousterian in Egypt and Sudan, characterized by the Levallois production of Nubian points, as well as (f) the Khormusan, a distinct facies of the Sudanese record (Marks, 1968; Goder-Goldeger, 2013). However, Aumassip’s classification of the non-Aterian MP/MSA of North Africa has been criticized on the grounds that it uses a European rather than African framework, and specifically excludes a number of sites from this North African ‘Mousterian’ variation e those described by Clark and others as ‘Middle Stone Age’ in Niger and Mali, and a set of very localized industries, such as those from M’zab and Dede in Algeria. To these, one could add the Pre-Aurignacian of Cyrenaica (McBurney, 1967). This highlights the point made earlier, that to understand the Aterian and its relationship to the MSA requires a broader comparative approach to technology, and that comparative framework must be Africa.
Aterian origins have usually been thought to lie in the Maghreb (Debčnath et al., 1986; Pasty, 1997), although this view has been strongly criticized (Kleindienst, 1998: 8). Alternative origins have been suggested in sub-Saharan Africa, pointing to affinities with industries with foliates, such as the Lupemban and Sangoan (Caton- Thompson, 1946; Clark, 1982, 2008; Kleindienst, 1998; Wengler, 2010; Garcea, 2012). Sub-Saharan links are pertinent, since all human fossil remains found in association with the Aterian are those of H. sapiens, thus representing one of the main regional early human populations of Africa prior to the colonization of Eurasia.
We would argue that the Central Sahara occupies a pivotal place in the origins and dispersals of modern humans, and that the MSA of Africa is the context in which we should be developing hypotheses. Following the re-dating of key Maghrebian sites, the recognition of the North African MSA diversity, and of its place within a broader complex of Mode 3 African industries, the Aterian could be considered as one among several MSA traditions that may have existed in North Africa.
Although these need chronological definition, MSA-making hominins could have occupied North Africa and the Sahara during several wet phases, both before and after MIS5, while the expansion of the Aterian during this latter period is consistent with the expansion of modern humans, and MSA sites and traditions, throughout Africa. Furthermore, Aterian and non-Aterian MSA assemblages are temporally interstratified at certain sites as Ifri N’Ammar in Morocco (Mikdad and Eiwanger, 2000; Jacobs et al., 2011) or El Guettar in Tunisia (Aouadi- Abdeljaouad and Belhouchet, 2008, 2012). Such dynamic demographic responses to changes in socio-ecological environments have been mapped in other MSA traditions of Africa, such as the Howieson’s Poort (Jacobs et al., 2008).
quote:(Fernando L. et al., The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes - April 2016)
This is ∼2.1 (95% CI: 1.7–2.9) times longer than the TMRCA of A00 and other extant modern human Y-chromosome lineages. This estimate suggests that the Y-chromosome divergence mirrors the population divergence of Neandertals and modern human ancestors, and it refutes alternative scenarios of a relatively recent or super-archaic origin of Neandertal Y chromosomes.
quote:(Michael F. Hammer Fernando L. Mendez et al., An African American Paternal Lineage Adds an Extremely Ancient Root to the Human Y Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree)
Genotyping of a DNA sample that was submitted to a commercial genetic-testing facility demonstrated that the Y chromosome of this African American individual carried the ancestral state of all known Y chromosome SNPs. To further characterize this lineage, which we dubbed A00 (see Figure S1, available online, for proposed nomenclature), we sequenced multiple regions (totaling ∼240 kb) of the X-degenerate portion of this chromosome, as well as a subset of these regions (∼180 kb) on a chromosome belonging to the previously known basal lineage A1b (which we rename here as A0).
quote:(New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens)
"old and an African form of Neanderthals"
quote:https://www.marres.education/haplogroups.htm
Neanderthals
code:A000T A8835
A000 A10805
A000a A21565
A000b A10801
A000b1 A10765
A00-T PR2921
quote:(Rene J. Herrera, Ralph Garcia-Bertrand
Recent data on Y chromosomes by Mendez et al 43 found evidence to support a model that placed the Neanderthal lineage as an outgroup to the modern human Y chromosomes, including A00,...
Out of Africa a Southern route to Arabia (Pg. 117)
Ancestral DNA, Human Origins, and Migrations)
quote:(Fernando L.Mendez, The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes)
Recurrent Mutations
Four mutations were inconsistent with tree ii in Figure 1A. Non-A0 lineages in the 1000 Genomes panel34 share the reference allele at coordinate 2,710,154, and individuals in haplogroups B through T share the reference allele at 23,558,260. The two others were at coordinates 9,386,241 and 15,024,530.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.02.023 [/QB]
quote:https://www.persee.fr/doc/bmsap_0037-8984_1976_num_3_2_1849?q=maroc
For their part, the Mousterians of Jebel Irhoud possess, in addition to Neanderthal characters, others proper to the Iberomaurusians, more particularly to those unearthed at Wadi Halfa (Nubia); they therefore correspond to an evolutionary stage prior to that of the Man of Dar-es-Soltane.
quote:You do understand it's becoming comical at this point with the biases that come from that "studio".
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:What would be the point of doing it based on "imagination" ? And if it was imagination why do the daynes studio wrote this :
You do agree it's a complete imagination by the artist Elisabeth Daynes, do you?
quote:and this is the description they give :
No use in any context outside of mainstream science without the express permission of Atelier Daynes.
quote:The point is to show how these people looked like not to just invent new faces lol
Reconstruction of a Mechta-Afalou head based on fossils found at Afalou in Algeria (1967). These fossils date from 25,000 to 8,000 years ago.
Moreover the second pic I posted is a reconstruction based on Gerasimov's 1955 book, which provides data with soft tissue estimations, possible nose shapes based on the nose bridge of the skull, plenty of cranial measurements as well their reconstructions with detailed explanation.
quote:Ok? This is from a blog by a former poster who was on here years ago:
Originally posted by Antalas:
The point is to show how these people looked like not to just invent new faces lol
Moreover the second pic I posted is a reconstruction based on Gerasimov's 1955 book, which provides data with soft tissue estimations, possible nose shapes based on the nose bridge of the skull, plenty of cranial measurements as well their reconstructions with detailed explanation.
quote:(Lawrence Barham, The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers (Cambridge World Archaeology))
Libya and the Maghreb:
If the archaeology of the Sahara’s southern margins remains relatively poorly understood, the Maghreb has long been the focus of sustained activity focused on the Pleistocene/Holocene transition (Lubell 2000, 2005). Here and at Haua Fteah in northeastern Libya, the Iberomaurusian industry introduced in Chapter 7 continued to be made into the terminal Pleistocene (McBurney 1967; Close and Wendorf 1990). Several unusual features are of interest, including evidence, rare at this time depth, for sculpture. This takes the form of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic ceramic figurines from Afalou, Algeria, baked from locally available clay to temperatures of 500◦–800◦C (Hachi 1996, Hachi et al. 2002). Dating 1511 kya, they are complemented by an earlier fragmentary figurine from the nearby site of Tamar Hat (Saxon 1976). Distinctive, too, are the many burials known from these later Iberomaurusian contexts, including apparent cemeteries at Afalou (Hachi 1996) and Taforalt, Morocco (almost 200 individuals; Ferembach et al. 1962). Analysis of these remains (see inset) raises issues of territoriality, limited mobility, and group identity that economic data are still too few to explore further.
Knowing that people hunted Barbary sheep and other large mammals and that they collected molluscs, both terrestrial and marine, is very different from being able to develop this checklist of ingredients into a meaningful set of recipes or menus that could illuminate the details of Iberomaurusian subsistence-settlement strategies.
WHAT BONES CAN TELL: BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HUNTER-GATHERERS OF THE MAGHREB:
The extremely large skeletal samples that come from sites such as Taforalt (Fig. 8.13) and Afalou constitute an invaluable resource for understanding the makers of Iberomaurusian artifacts, and their number is unparalleled elsewhere in Africa for the early Holocene. Frequently termed Mechta-Afalou or Mechtoid, these were a skeletally robust people and definitely African in origin, though attempts, such as those of Ferembach (1985), to establish similarities with much older and rarer Aterian skeletal remains are tenuous given the immense temporal separation between the two (Close and Wendorf 1990). At the opposite end of the chronological spectrum, dental morphology does suggest connections with later Africans, including those responsible for the Capsian Industry (Irish 2000) and early mid-Holocene human remains from the western half of the Sahara (Dutour 1989), something that points to the Maghreb as one of the regions from which people recolonised the desert (MacDonald 1998).
Turning to what can be learned about cultural practices and disease, the individuals from Taforalt, the largest sample by far, display little evidence of trauma, though they do suggest a high incidence of infant mortality, with evidence for dental caries, arthritis, and rheumatism among other degenerative conditions. Interestingly, Taforalt also provides one of the oldest known instances of the practice of trepanation, the surgical removal of a portion of the cranium; the patient evidently survived for some time, as there are signs of bone regrowth in the affected area. Another form of body modification was much more widespread and, indeed, a distinctive feature of the Iberomaurusian skeletal sample as a whole. This was the practice of removing two or more of the upper incisors, usually around puberty and from both males and females, something that probably served as both a rite of passage and an ethnic marker (Close and Wendorf 1990), just as it does in parts of sub-Saharan Africa today (e.g., van Reenen 1987). Cranial and postcranial malformations are also apparent and may indicate pronounced endogamy at a much more localised level (Hadjouis 2002), perhaps supported by the degree of variability between different site samples noted by Irish (2000).
quote:(Paul C. Sereno, Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change)
Craniometric data from seven human groups (Tables 3, 4) were subjected to principal components analysis, which allies the early Holocene population at Gobero (Gob-e) with mid-Holocene “Mechtoids” from Mali and Mauritania [18], [26], [27] and with Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians and early Holocene Capsians from across the Maghreb
Figure 6. Principal components analysis of craniofacial dimensions among Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.
Table 3. Nine human populations sampled for craniometric analysis ranging in age from the Late Pleistocene (ca. 80,000 BP, Aterian) to the mid-Holocene (ca. 4000 BP) and in geographic distribution across the Maghreb to the southern Sahara [18], [19], [26], [27], [54].
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002995.t003
quote:The point is that 1) it shows actually industries coming form the Magreb ming into the Levant, 2) showing the correction with the Neanderthal long before any modern species migrated back to introduce introgression into the Africans populations.
Originally posted by Antalas:
I don't understand why you post all of this ?? Are you aware IAM are not aterians or mousterians ? And jebel irhoud are not neanderthals, they only had neanderthal-like traits but overall they show links to homo sapiens sapiens (which is why it is now considered "proto-homo sapiens") :
quote:Supplementary Note 10: f-statistic analyses.
"However, it is also possible that farmers in North Africa migrated to Europe. From the genetic point of view, the idea of this prehistoric North African influx in Iberia is sustained by the presence of old European-specific lineages of North African origin.":
quote:(J. J. Hublin, The origin of Neandertals, PNAS September 22, 2009 106 (38) 16022-16027)
Neandertals that can be analyzed in light of recently acquired paleogenetical data, an abundance of archeological evidence, and a well-known environmental context. Their origin likely relates to an episode of recolonization of Western Eurasia by hominins of African origin carrying the Acheulean technology into Europe around 600 ka.
[...]
Another issue is related to the archaeological context. Although Acheulean industries appeared in Africa before 1.6 ma, they occurred for the first time in Europe between 600 and 500 ka. The simultaneity between the emergence of bifaces in Europe and the occurrence of similar forms of hominins on both sides of the Mediterranean can be seen as the likely result of an Out-of-Africa event, the Acheulean being imported into Europe by a new species of large-brained hominins. A date for the SH hominins displaying shared derived features with later Neandertals ca. 600 ka would imply that the phenotypic differentiation of the African and Western Eurasian population would immediately follow this migration.
Three evolutionary scenarios for the origin of the Neandertals: (A) depicts an early, (C) depicts a late, and (B) depicts an intermediate divergence time [modified from Rightmire (25)].
Scenarios A and C emphasize the role of these variations in the taxonomic assignment of the available fossil material, but one cannot overlook the similarities between the initial stages of the Western Eurasian clade and its African counterpart (34).
quote:(Recep Ozgur Taskent (2017), Variation and Functional Impact of Neanderthal Ancestry in Western Asia).
Notably, a recent study found lower proportions of Neanderthal ancestry in ancient genomes from the Middle East (Lazaridis et al. 2016). This study further identified high levels of basal Eurasian ancestry (Lazaridis et al. 2014) in these ancient West Asian genomes, which was negatively correlated with Neanderthal ancestry, suggesting that the hypothetical basal Eurasian lineage carried lower levels of Neanderthal ancestry than other ancestral Eurasian lineages (Lazaridis et al. 2016). The degree of basal Eurasian ancestry could also explain variation in Neanderthal ancestry among present-day West Eurasian genomes. For instance, a high level of basal Eurasian or sub-Saharan African ancestry could underlie the observation that there is a relatively low proportion of Neanderthal ancestry in a present-day Qatari Bedouin population as compared with European and some other Middle Eastern populations (Rodriguez-Flores et al. 2016).
[…]
Heterogeneity especially with regards to varying levels of sub-Saharan or basal Eurasian ancestry may explain the elevated variation in allele sharing with Neanderthals among Western Asian genomes. This scenario would be consistent with the results of a previous study that found different levels of Neanderthal ancestry among three Qatari populations (Rodriguez-Flores et al. 2016), possibly due to differences in their levels of sub-Saharan and basal Eurasian ancestries (Scott et al. 2016).
[…]
We replicated previous studies (Lazaridis et al. 2016; Rodriguez-Flores et al. 2016) showing that contemporary Western Asian populations have similar or lower levels of Neanderthal introgression than other Eurasian populations. The presence of sub-Saharan African ancestry and possible ancestry from a basal Eurasian lineage with lower (or no) signatures of Neanderthal introgression are the most parsimonious explanations for this observation. We also find considerable variation in the levels of Neanderthal introgression among Western Asian populations (even between one sample-set to another from the Druze population), which we also attribute to variable sub-Saharan African ancestry.
quote:(Juan L. Rodriguez-Flores (2016), Indigenous Arabs are descendants of the earliest split from ancient Eurasian populations)
These levels of Neanderthal admixture are consistent with an early divergence of Arab ancestors after the out- of-Africa bottleneck but before the major Neanderthal admixture events in Europe and other regions of Eurasia. When compared to worldwide populations sampled in the 1000 Genomes Project, although the indigenous Arabs had a signal of admixture with Europeans, they clustered in a basal, outgroup position to all 1000 Genomes non-Africans when considering pairwise similarity across the entire genome. These results place indigenous Arabs as the most distant relatives of all other contemporary non-Africans and identify these people as direct descendants of the first Eurasian populations established by the out-of-Africa migrations.
[…]
The neighbor-joining analysis re- vealed that 50 of the 56 Q1 (Bedouin), along with three Q2 (Persian-South Asian), one Q3 (African), and two Q0 (Subpopulation Unassigned) Qataris, clustered outside African lineages and were also the most extreme outgroup that are basal to all non-African popula- tions lacking recent African admixture (Fig. 6D).
[...]
Given that the Q1 (Bedouin) have the greatest proportion of Arab genetic ancestry measured in contemporary populations (Hodgson et al. 2014; Shriner et al. 2014) and are among the best genetic representatives of the autochthonous population on the Arabian Peninsula, these two conclusions therefore point to the Bedouins being direct de- scendants of the earliest split after the out-of-Africa migration events that established a basal Eurasian population (Lazaridis et al. 2014).
[…]
The basal position of the Q1 (Bedouin) also has inter- esting implications for theories about the frequency, timing, and path of major migration waves that established populations in Asia and Europe (Shi et al. 2008; Lazaridis et al. 2014; Shriner et al. 2014). A few isolated Asian populations were previously sus- pected to be descendants of a separate out-of-Africa migration wave based on Y Chromosome data (Hammer et al. 1998; Shi et al. 2008). Yet, distinct out-of-Africa migration events or separate migration waves emanating from the Arabian Peninsula into Europe and West Asia would be expected to place Bedouins/ Europeans and Asians on separate branches of a pairwise clustering tree, distinct from our finding that places the Q1 (Bedouin) as di- rect descendants of the earliest lineage that split from the ancient non-African population.
[…]
This is also consistent with the recent discovery of another anatomically modern human who lived 55,000 yr ago just northeast of the Arabian Peninsula that had morphological features similar to European peoples (Hershkovitz et al. 2015), where this individual could have been a descendant of the basal Eurasian population that remained on the peninsula.
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:
Originally posted by Doug M:
Again, the problem with this paper is it proposes that the Aterian tool industry is the cradle of human stone tool culture in "North Africa" going back 30,000 years ago. And that this culture is supposedly centered in and around Morocco which of course is near to Europe. However, the problem with this is that the Aterian was NOT the epicenter of human stone tool culture in North Africa and never has been.
point here is that they are using morocco because of its proximity to Europe in order to fabricate the idea that stone tool technology evolution in Africa required migration and interaction with Europeans, which is blatantly false. First the problem starts with the Aterian itself:
The technological character of the Aterian has been debated for almost a century, but has until recently eluded definition. The problems defining the industry have related to its research history and the fact that a number of similarities have been observed between the Aterian and other North African stone tool industries of the same date. Levallois reduction is widespread across the whole of North Africa throughout the Middle Stone Age, and scrapers and denticulates are ubiquitous. Bifacial foliates moreover represent a huge taxonomic category and the form and dimension of such foliates associated with tanged tools is extremely varied. There is also a significant variation of tanged tools themselves, with various forms representing both different tool types (e.g., knives, scrapers, points) and the degree tool resharpening.
quote:Further more:
Originally posted by Antalas:
hahahah wtf what kind of paranoid post is that ? So now you'll refuse any paper on Morocco because it's close to Europe ? The paper literally said nothing about the origin of aterians nor did they say Iberomaurusians came from Europe.
And Aterian culture wasn't only found in Morocco :
The Aterian has been reported on the northern shores of Lake Chad for up to 25,000 years. It has been recognized south of the Tropic of Cancer (20th parallel), from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, from the Mediterranean to Chad, its industrial structure seems to have always preserved its technological constants and its stalk. https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/2712
quote:Of course I do, how else is one going to refute some of the claims made in that paper? By using "my opinion"?
Originally posted by the lioness,:
Ish you are relying on a lot of copy and paste to make an argument
quote:A second point I'd like to make is the following:
Considering the results recently obtained for Taforalt samples43, we tested if IAM has sub- Saharan ancestry using f4-statistic (Figure S10.3). For that, we calculated f4(Chimpanzee, sub-Saharan African population; Natufian, IAM). As reported for Taforalt, West African populations, such as Gambia, Mandenka or Esam, produce positive f4 values and significant Z scores, evidencing sub-Saharan African admixture.
quote:When I responded to the above with Jebel Irhoud findings, it was literally flip-flopped into let's not talk about this.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:The oldest human remains were found in Morocco
At face value this paper is garbage as it pushes many invalid talking points that don't make any sense. First it uses Morocco as the epicenter of "North Africa" when it is not now and never has been the primary "locus" of North African populations or cultural evolution.
There is no discussion of the Nile Valley,
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114
one could argue this is epicenter of all humanity, although it's a guess
_____________________________
As for the term "North Africa" used in anthropology I am against it and what you said here contributes to that
The geography of it can be defined in several not agreed upon ways.
I agree that the Maghreb should be considered different from the Eastern part which is oriented along a river system, the Nile
quote:Doug M have you read the supplement? Carlos D. Bustamante is in there also.
Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:What is the title of the article and where in that article does it discuss evidences from outside Morocco?
Originally posted by Antalas:
Where in the paper does it says it started in NW Africa ? Moreover the Sahel isn't a north african region.
quote:The only thing where the studio might be wrong is when it comes to pigmentation that's why Philip Edwin made it darker and that's why his reconstruction looks like the second pic I posted.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
You do understand it's becoming comical at this point with the biases that come from that "studio".
I challenge you to show me just 1 modern African reconstruction made by Elisabeth Daynes that doesn't look like "European type".
quote:It's seems that you and the author of this blog don't acknowledge the existing diversity among Iberomaurusian remains. Mechta-Afalou was already distinct from other IBM communities :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Ok? This is from a blog by a former poster who was on here years ago:
Mechta and Afalou: Do they and the so-called "Mechtoids" constitute a type with the "Cro-Magnon"?
https://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/2008/02/mechta-and-afalou-do-they-and-so-called.html
Remarkable how they came to different conclusion in these publications, isn't it?
quote:https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/90696
We studied three northern African samples of human cranial remains from the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary: Afalou-bou-Rhummel, Taforalt, and Sudanese Nubia (Jebel Sahaba and Tushka), and compared them to late Pleistocene Europeans and modern Europeans and Africans. Despite their relatively late dates, all three of our own samples exhibit the robusticity typical of late Pleistocene Homo sapiens. As far as population affinities are concerned, Taforalt is Caucasoid and closely resembles late Pleistocene Europeans, Sudanese Nubia is Negroid, and Afalou exhibits an intermediate status. Evidently the Caucasoid/Negroid transition has fluctuated north and south over time, perhaps following the changes in the distribution of climatic zones.
quote:https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/880
Men of the Mechta-Afalou type were not located in the northern region of Africa. Other men of the Mechta-Afalus type, contemporary with the Afalus, were recently discovered in Jebel Sahaba in Lower Nubia (Wendorf, 1968), accompanied by a microlithic-dominated Qadian industry, related to the Iberomaurusian industry of North Africa. The whole of their features offer a certain kinship with the Men of Afalou, but with however important differences and an orientation towards negroid characteristics as well as the absence of any dental avulsion. This discovery rests the still unsolved problem of the origin of the Mechta-Afalou men of North Africa.
quote:1)I already knew this but I shouldn't remind you that movements went both ways.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: The point is that 1) it shows actually industries coming form the Magreb ming into the Levant, 2) showing the correction with the Neanderthal long before any modern species migrated back to introduce introgression into the Africans populations.
It was you who posted the source connecting these remains to the Neanderthal, isn't it? What industry and techology did the bring with them, besides carrying some Neanderthal introgression?
quote:1) You seem to mix cultures and genetics without taking timeframe into account anyway your first source also shows that a massive influx of iberian settlers settled in Morocco during the late neolithic so again such movements can go both ways there was nothing to prevent europeans or levantines to settle in Africa and vice versa.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:quote:Supplementary Note 10: f-statistic analyses.
"However, it is also possible that farmers in North Africa migrated to Europe. From the genetic point of view, the idea of this prehistoric North African influx in Iberia is sustained by the presence of old European-specific lineages of North African origin.":
quote:(J. J. Hublin, The origin of Neandertals, PNAS September 22, 2009 106 (38) 16022-16027)
Neandertals that can be analyzed in light of recently acquired paleogenetical data, an abundance of archeological evidence, and a well-known environmental context. Their origin likely relates to an episode of recolonization of Western Eurasia by hominins of African origin carrying the Acheulean technology into Europe around 600 ka.
[...]
Another issue is related to the archaeological context. Although Acheulean industries appeared in Africa before 1.6 ma, they occurred for the first time in Europe between 600 and 500 ka. The simultaneity between the emergence of bifaces in Europe and the occurrence of similar forms of hominins on both sides of the Mediterranean can be seen as the likely result of an Out-of-Africa event, the Acheulean being imported into Europe by a new species of large-brained hominins. A date for the SH hominins displaying shared derived features with later Neandertals ca. 600 ka would imply that the phenotypic differentiation of the African and Western Eurasian population would immediately follow this migration.
Three evolutionary scenarios for the origin of the Neandertals: (A) depicts an early, (C) depicts a late, and (B) depicts an intermediate divergence time [modified from Rightmire (25)].
Scenarios A and C emphasize the role of these variations in the taxonomic assignment of the available fossil material, but one cannot overlook the similarities between the initial stages of the Western Eurasian clade and its African counterpart (34).
quote:(Recep Ozgur Taskent (2017), Variation and Functional Impact of Neanderthal Ancestry in Western Asia).
Notably, a recent study found lower proportions of Neanderthal ancestry in ancient genomes from the Middle East (Lazaridis et al. 2016). This study further identified high levels of basal Eurasian ancestry (Lazaridis et al. 2014) in these ancient West Asian genomes, which was negatively correlated with Neanderthal ancestry, suggesting that the hypothetical basal Eurasian lineage carried lower levels of Neanderthal ancestry than other ancestral Eurasian lineages (Lazaridis et al. 2016). The degree of basal Eurasian ancestry could also explain variation in Neanderthal ancestry among present-day West Eurasian genomes. For instance, a high level of basal Eurasian or sub-Saharan African ancestry could underlie the observation that there is a relatively low proportion of Neanderthal ancestry in a present-day Qatari Bedouin population as compared with European and some other Middle Eastern populations (Rodriguez-Flores et al. 2016).
[…]
Heterogeneity especially with regards to varying levels of sub-Saharan or basal Eurasian ancestry may explain the elevated variation in allele sharing with Neanderthals among Western Asian genomes. This scenario would be consistent with the results of a previous study that found different levels of Neanderthal ancestry among three Qatari populations (Rodriguez-Flores et al. 2016), possibly due to differences in their levels of sub-Saharan and basal Eurasian ancestries (Scott et al. 2016).
[…]
We replicated previous studies (Lazaridis et al. 2016; Rodriguez-Flores et al. 2016) showing that contemporary Western Asian populations have similar or lower levels of Neanderthal introgression than other Eurasian populations. The presence of sub-Saharan African ancestry and possible ancestry from a basal Eurasian lineage with lower (or no) signatures of Neanderthal introgression are the most parsimonious explanations for this observation. We also find considerable variation in the levels of Neanderthal introgression among Western Asian populations (even between one sample-set to another from the Druze population), which we also attribute to variable sub-Saharan African ancestry.
quote:(Juan L. Rodriguez-Flores (2016), Indigenous Arabs are descendants of the earliest split from ancient Eurasian populations)
These levels of Neanderthal admixture are consistent with an early divergence of Arab ancestors after the out- of-Africa bottleneck but before the major Neanderthal admixture events in Europe and other regions of Eurasia. When compared to worldwide populations sampled in the 1000 Genomes Project, although the indigenous Arabs had a signal of admixture with Europeans, they clustered in a basal, outgroup position to all 1000 Genomes non-Africans when considering pairwise similarity across the entire genome. These results place indigenous Arabs as the most distant relatives of all other contemporary non-Africans and identify these people as direct descendants of the first Eurasian populations established by the out-of-Africa migrations.
[…]
The neighbor-joining analysis re- vealed that 50 of the 56 Q1 (Bedouin), along with three Q2 (Persian-South Asian), one Q3 (African), and two Q0 (Subpopulation Unassigned) Qataris, clustered outside African lineages and were also the most extreme outgroup that are basal to all non-African popula- tions lacking recent African admixture (Fig. 6D).
[...]
Given that the Q1 (Bedouin) have the greatest proportion of Arab genetic ancestry measured in contemporary populations (Hodgson et al. 2014; Shriner et al. 2014) and are among the best genetic representatives of the autochthonous population on the Arabian Peninsula, these two conclusions therefore point to the Bedouins being direct de- scendants of the earliest split after the out-of-Africa migration events that established a basal Eurasian population (Lazaridis et al. 2014).
[…]
The basal position of the Q1 (Bedouin) also has inter- esting implications for theories about the frequency, timing, and path of major migration waves that established populations in Asia and Europe (Shi et al. 2008; Lazaridis et al. 2014; Shriner et al. 2014). A few isolated Asian populations were previously sus- pected to be descendants of a separate out-of-Africa migration wave based on Y Chromosome data (Hammer et al. 1998; Shi et al. 2008). Yet, distinct out-of-Africa migration events or separate migration waves emanating from the Arabian Peninsula into Europe and West Asia would be expected to place Bedouins/ Europeans and Asians on separate branches of a pairwise clustering tree, distinct from our finding that places the Q1 (Bedouin) as di- rect descendants of the earliest lineage that split from the ancient non-African population.
[…]
This is also consistent with the recent discovery of another anatomically modern human who lived 55,000 yr ago just northeast of the Arabian Peninsula that had morphological features similar to European peoples (Hershkovitz et al. 2015), where this individual could have been a descendant of the basal Eurasian population that remained on the peninsula.
quote:Actually some neanderthals had light skin, red hair, etc :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: From yo girl Elisabeth Daynes,
[/QB]
quote:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025143311.htm
a postdoctoral researcher working with Hopi E. Hoekstra in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. "The two Neanderthal individuals we studied showed a point mutation not seen in modern humans. When we induced such a mutation in human cells, we found that it impaired MC1R activity, a condition that leads to red hair and pale skin in modern humans ."
quote:Your point ? Don't forget :
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
Further more:
Volume 300, 25 June 2013, Pages 153–170
The Middle Palaeolithic in the Desert
The Middle Stone Age of the Central Sahara: Biogeographical opportunities and technological strategies in later human evolution
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618212033848 [/QB]
quote:https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/2161
For a long time, the absence of true Upper Paleolithic cultures in the Maghreb and Sahara has been accepted. Neither the Iberomaurusian nor, a fortiori, the Capsian appear to have originated from the Aterian, whose lithic industry is still mainly of the Middle Paleolithic type. As a result, the Iberomaurusian and the Capsian appear to be of allochthonous origin.
quote:what ?? they actually keep talking about industries like the iberomaurusian one, capsian, cardium/cardial, bell beaker, etc
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
This paper makes no mention of any industry and or distribution. And that's problematic.
quote:Of course she did not. And no, I am not asking about archaic hominids.
Originally posted by Antalas:
The only thing where the studio might be wrong is when it comes to pigmentation that's why Philip Edwin made it darker and that's why his reconstruction looks like the second pic I posted.
She didn't made lots of reconstructions when it comes to Africa except IBM and a few archaic hominids.
That's clearly not "imagination"
quote:The author is known as the poster Supercar. He's no longer on here, from what I understand. And yes, the author does acknowledge the existing diversity among Iberomaurusian remains. Al of this was already discussed on this site, that's why I recall a lot of the older data. In fact he did speak touch on "Collin Groves, whose reactionary approach to bio-anthropology is all too apparent, the following was presented in his paper of “The terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa”, 1999."
Originally posted by Antalas:
It's seems that you and the author of this blog don't acknowledge the existing diversity among Iberomaurusian remains. Mechta-Afalou was already distinct from other IBM communities :
quote:Yes, indeed they confirmed the Iberomaurusians interactions. However, these show streams from Africa into the Levant and Southern Europe. And I am not surprised.
Originally posted by Antalas:
As for the other quotes you posted, they confirmed what we already knew about the presence of Iberomaurusians in the Sahara and their interactions with the proto-mediterranean capsians.
quote:Supplementary Note 10: f-statistic analyses.
"However, it is also possible that farmers in North Africa migrated to Europe. From the genetic point of view, the idea of this prehistoric North African influx in Iberia is sustained by the presence of old European-specific lineages of North African origin.":
quote:(Laura R. Botiguéa,1, Brenna M. Henn et al., Gene flow from North Africa contributes to differential human genetic diversity in southern Europe (July 16, 2013))
Whereas inferred IBD sharing does not indicate directionality, the North African samples that have highest IBD sharing with Iberian populations also tend to have the lowest proportion of the European cluster in ADMIXTURE (Fig. 1), e.g., Saharawi, Tunisian Berbers, and South Moroccans. For example, the Andalucians share many IBD segments with the Tunisians (Fig. 3), who present extremely minimal levels of European ancestry. This suggests that gene flow occurred from Africa to Europe rather than the other way around.
[...]
Alternative models of gene flow: Migration(s) from the Near East likely have had an effect on genetic diversity between southern and northern Europe (discussed below), but do not appear to explain the gradients of African ancestry in Europe. A model of gene flow from the Near East into both Europe and North Africa, such as a strong demic wave during the Neolithic, could result in shared haplotypes between Europe and North Africa. However, we observe haplotype sharing between Europe and the Near East follows a southeast to southwest gradient, while sharing between Europe and the Maghreb follows the opposite pattern (Fig. 2); this suggests that gene flow from the Near East cannot account for the sharing with North Africa.
quote:(Brotherton P1, Haak W, Templeton J, Nat Commun. 2013;4:1764. doi: 10.1038/ncomms2656. Neolithic mitochondrial haplogroup H genomes and the genetic origins of Europeans.)
Haplogroup H dominates present-day Western European mitochondrial DNA variability (>40%), yet was less common (~19%) among Early Neolithic farmers (~5450 BC) and virtually absent in Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
Here we investigate this major component of the maternal population history of modern Europeans and sequence 39 complete haplogroup H mitochondrial genomes from ancient human remains. We then compare this 'real-time' genetic data with cultural changes taking place between the Early Neolithic (~5450 BC) and Bronze Age (~2200 BC) in Central Europe. Our results reveal that the current diversity and distribution of haplogroup H were largely established by the Mid Neolithic (~4000 BC), but with substantial genetic contributions from subsequent pan-European cultures such as the Bell Beakers expanding out of Iberia in the Late Neolithic (~2800 BC). Dated haplogroup H genomes allow us to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of haplogroup H and reveal a mutation rate 45% higher than current estimates for human mitochondria.
quote:1) You are one of the very few to acknowledge this.
Originally posted by Antalas:
1)I already knew this but I shouldn't remind you that movements went both ways.
2) You implied IAM had no neanderthal admixture and that Jebel irhoud might have been some kind of african neanderthal which is false.
quote:1) No I am reviewing the history of the many industries prior to what is claimed by the authors. And I touch on many possibilities.
Originally posted by Antalas:
1) You seem to mix cultures and genetics without taking timeframe into account anyway your first source also shows that a massive influx of iberian settlers settled in Morocco during the late neolithic so again such movements can go both ways there was nothing to prevent europeans or levantines to settle in Africa and vice versa.
quote:(Ki-Zerbo, 1981,p.572).
"Between 139kya and 125kya the Neanderthals migrated back into africa and spread from Morocco to East Africa"
quote:~Nina Hollfelder, Carina M. Schlebusch, Torsten Günther, Hiba Babiker, Hisham Y. Hassan, Mattias Jakobsson
Furthermore, we merged the information for three archaic hominins, two Neanderthals (Prüfer et al 2014) and one Denisovan (Meyer et al 2012) with dat2a using the same approach as described for the ancient humans above. Then the f4-ratio f4(Denisovan,Altai Neanderthal; Juhoansi, X))/f4(Denisovan, Altai Neanderthal; Juhoansi, Mezmaiskaya Neanderthal) was used to explore the Neanderthal contribution to East African populations (Figure 9B). Neanderthal and Eurasian proportions are highly correlated (0.92349), suggesting that the Eurasian back-admixture is the source of all Neanderthal ancestry in North-East Africa (Figure 9C) as shown previously by Haber et al. 2016 (35).
Northeast African genomic variation shaped by the continuity of indigenous groups and Eurasian migrations
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006976
2) Your second quote is about "hominins of african origin" "600 ka" so this does not concern modern humans ; it also doesn't prevent north africans from acquiring neanderthal alleles much later in History especially that there is no continuity between these "hominins" and groups like Iberomaurusians or even aterians.
3)Your basal eurasian quotes actually contradict your claim since it would mean that despite this "acheulean" african migration to eurasia, sub-saharan or basal eurasian ancestry actually lowers the level of neanderthal ancestry and do not increase it therefore what does that mean for IAM having neanderthal alleles ?
quote:(Fernando L.Mendez, The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes)
We investigate its divergence from orthologous chimpanzee and modern human sequences and find strong support for a model that places the Neandertal lineage as an outgroup to modern human Y chromosomes—including A00, the highly divergent basal haplogroup.
We called bases for both the Neandertal and A00 sequences by using SAMtools
quote:Yes, some did in later times.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Actually some neanderthals had light skin, red hair, etc :
quote:The point was to understand the dynamic better pertaining these industries and distributions on the African continent to see how these relate to one another, or not
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:Your point ? Don't forget :
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
Further more:
Volume 300, 25 June 2013, Pages 153–170
The Middle Palaeolithic in the Desert
The Middle Stone Age of the Central Sahara: Biogeographical opportunities and technological strategies in later human evolution
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618212033848
quote:https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/2161
For a long time, the absence of true Upper Paleolithic cultures in the Maghreb and Sahara has been accepted. Neither the Iberomaurusian nor, a fortiori, the Capsian appear to have originated from the Aterian, whose lithic industry is still mainly of the Middle Paleolithic type. As a result, the Iberomaurusian and the Capsian appear to be of allochthonous origin.
quote:https://www.thoughtco.com/aurignacian-period-169990
The Aurignacian period (40,000 to 28,000 years ago) is an Upper Paleolithic stone tool tradition, usually considered associated with both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals throughout Europe and parts of Africa. The Aurignacian's big leap forward is the production of blade tools by flaking pieces of stone off a larger piece of stone, thought to be an indication of more refined tool making.
quote:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4944763/
In the 1940s, Leakey replaced the Aurignacian component of the name with Capsian, after he recognised similarities with the Capsian of North Africa (Leakey 1947). The motivation for this change was likely the influence of colleagues from Cambridge and Africa (Cole 1975), who, like Leakey himself, recognised that there were terminological issues arising from the use of European nomenclature and recommended an African name for an African industry (Leakey 1950). Such recommendations would later be ratified by the Burg-Wartenstein protocol on precision and definition in archaeological terminology (Clark et al. 1966).
quote:Yes, I did skip over that. I recall reading it, but due to me multi tasking many things it skipped on me at the time I wrote that. I just was not able to see a direct correlation.
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:what ?? they actually keep talking about industries like the iberomaurusian one, capsian, cardium/cardial, bell beaker, etc
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
This paper makes no mention of any industry and or distribution. And that's problematic.
quote:
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
What information is there on the hair texture?
quote:https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aar8380 ( supplementary text )
The TCHH1 gene codes for trichohyalin, a protein active in hair follicle roots. For all Taforalt individuals we find the derived homozygous AA genotype
for SNP rs17646946 in this gene, which has been associated with straighter hair in Europeans (allelic effect (ß) = 0.4-0.5, explained variance = 6.11%) (98).
quote:That's your opinion.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Most of her reconstructions are ironic and comical.
quote:Well if you want something that postdate Collin's work no problem :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: The author is known as the poster Supercar. He's no longer on here, from what I understand. And yes, the author does acknowledge the existing diversity among Iberomaurusian remains. Al of this was already discussed on this site, that's why I recall a lot of the older data. In fact he did speak touch on "Collin Groves, whose reactionary approach to bio-anthropology is all too apparent, the following was presented in his paper of “The terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa”, 1999."
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=003435;p=1#000007
It so happens to be that the claim made by Collin Groves was refuted by other data. Data you don't acknowledge. What apparently skipped on you here is the chronology in these studies. You are posting data that has been refuted by later studies. That's comical. The 1999 Collin Groves and Wendorf, 1968 encountered a problem, this problem was solved by later studies. the aforementioned I have posted.
quote:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oa.2315
The body shape of the terminal Pleistocene Jebel Sahaba population is tropical-adapted, with elongated limbs, especially in the distal segments, and is most similar to living sub-Saharan Africans and less similar to late Pleistocene and Holocene North Africans (including Egyptians and Nubians). The sample’s body shape likely reflects elevated gene flow up the Nile Valley from areas further south, but may also be due in part to the tropical hot conditions present at the site, even during glacial periods. The Jebel Sahaba sample are distinct in body shape from penecontemporary humans from Afalou-BouRhummel (Algeria) and El Wad Natufians from the southern Levant—a result consistent with the results of both Irish (2000, 2005) using dental data and Franciscus (1995, 2003) using nasal data.
quote:Again you mix up very different populations and Eras without taking the context into account but again these movements were not unidirectional. It's already well known that south europeans and especially Iberians have proper north african ancestry and haplotypes but it's also well known that north africans have neolithic and chalcolithic iberian ancestry. Moreover a good part of their north african ancestry is in fact medieval.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Yes, indeed they confirmed the Iberomaurusians interactions. However, these show streams from Africa into the Levant and Southern Europe. And I am not surprised.
quote:Supplementary Note 10: f-statistic analyses.
"However, it is also possible that farmers in North Africa migrated to Europe. From the genetic point of view, the idea of this prehistoric North African influx in Iberia is sustained by the presence of old European-specific lineages of North African origin.":
It kind of correlates with the following:
quote:(Laura R. Botiguéa,1, Brenna M. Henn et al., Gene flow from North Africa contributes to differential human genetic diversity in southern Europe (July 16, 2013))
Whereas inferred IBD sharing does not indicate directionality, the North African samples that have highest IBD sharing with Iberian populations also tend to have the lowest proportion of the European cluster in ADMIXTURE (Fig. 1), e.g., Saharawi, Tunisian Berbers, and South Moroccans. For example, the Andalucians share many IBD segments with the Tunisians (Fig. 3), who present extremely minimal levels of European ancestry. This suggests that gene flow occurred from Africa to Europe rather than the other way around.
[...]
Alternative models of gene flow: Migration(s) from the Near East likely have had an effect on genetic diversity between southern and northern Europe (discussed below), but do not appear to explain the gradients of African ancestry in Europe. A model of gene flow from the Near East into both Europe and North Africa, such as a strong demic wave during the Neolithic, could result in shared haplotypes between Europe and North Africa. However, we observe haplotype sharing between Europe and the Near East follows a southeast to southwest gradient, while sharing between Europe and the Maghreb follows the opposite pattern (Fig. 2); this suggests that gene flow from the Near East cannot account for the sharing with North Africa.
quote:(Brotherton P1, Haak W, Templeton J, Nat Commun. 2013;4:1764. doi: 10.1038/ncomms2656. Neolithic mitochondrial haplogroup H genomes and the genetic origins of Europeans.)
Haplogroup H dominates present-day Western European mitochondrial DNA variability (>40%), yet was less common (~19%) among Early Neolithic farmers (~5450 BC) and virtually absent in Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
Here we investigate this major component of the maternal population history of modern Europeans and sequence 39 complete haplogroup H mitochondrial genomes from ancient human remains. We then compare this 'real-time' genetic data with cultural changes taking place between the Early Neolithic (~5450 BC) and Bronze Age (~2200 BC) in Central Europe. Our results reveal that the current diversity and distribution of haplogroup H were largely established by the Mid Neolithic (~4000 BC), but with substantial genetic contributions from subsequent pan-European cultures such as the Bell Beakers expanding out of Iberia in the Late Neolithic (~2800 BC). Dated haplogroup H genomes allow us to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of haplogroup H and reveal a mutation rate 45% higher than current estimates for human mitochondria.
quote:That's really far-fetched since the scientific consensus is clear about the absence of neanderthal remains in Africa. Jebel irhoud people were not neanderthals :
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
2) I am implying that they may already had it before anyone back migrated. The authors seem to imply that the Neanderthal introgression can determine back migrations into Africa. It's pure speculation. Nor did I claim that Jebel irhoud was a Neanderthal variant. The papers say that Neanderthals were in Africa moved out of Africa and "back migrated to Africa, prior to in the introgression into the homo sapience. But yeah, as you said in your opening statement, it was bidirectional.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22336?sf86030179=1
We identified a mosaic of features including facial, mandibular and dental morphology that aligns the Jebel Irhoud material with early or recent anatomically modern humans and more primitive neurocranial and endocranial morphology. In combination with an age of 315 ± 34 thousand years (as determined by thermoluminescence dating)3, this evidence makes Jebel Irhoud the oldest and richest African Middle Stone Age hominin site that documents early stages of the H. sapiens clade in which key features of modern morphology were established.
quote:So it confirms that such type of admixture was brought in Africa by eurasian back migrations.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
quote:~Nina Hollfelder, Carina M. Schlebusch, Torsten Günther, Hiba Babiker, Hisham Y. Hassan, Mattias Jakobsson
Furthermore, we merged the information for three archaic hominins, two Neanderthals (Prüfer et al 2014) and one Denisovan (Meyer et al 2012) with dat2a using the same approach as described for the ancient humans above. Then the f4-ratio f4(Denisovan,Altai Neanderthal; Juhoansi, X))/f4(Denisovan, Altai Neanderthal; Juhoansi, Mezmaiskaya Neanderthal) was used to explore the Neanderthal contribution to East African populations (Figure 9B). Neanderthal and Eurasian proportions are highly correlated (0.92349), suggesting that the Eurasian back-admixture is the source of all Neanderthal ancestry in North-East Africa (Figure 9C) as shown previously by Haber et al. 2016 (35).
Northeast African genomic variation shaped by the continuity of indigenous groups and Eurasian migrations
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006976
quote:1) so it's your personal review and it's "possibilities" not facts
Originally posted by Ish Geber: 1) No I am reviewing the history of the many industries prior to what is claimed by the authors. And I touch on many possibilities.
2) It does concern the Neanderthals.
3) The Eurasian basal is hypothesized. And it depends on when this introgression took place.
quote:Chen et al; Identifying and Interpreting Apparent Neanderthal Ancestry in African Individuals (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.012)
We applied IBDmix to 2,504 individuals from geographically diverse populations to identify and analyze Neanderthal sequences segregating in modern humans. Strikingly, we find that African individuals carry a stronger signal of Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought. We show that this can be explained by genuine Neanderthal ancestry due to migrations back to Africa, predominately from ancestral Europeans, and gene flow into Neanderthals from an early dispersing group of humans out of Africa.
quote:Here :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Yes, some did and some didn't in later times.
Ironically the artist in question has an "agenda" to fulfill. Show me any Neanderthal reconstruction made by Elisabeth Daynes that shows Neanderthal with the darker variants?
"bones of a 43,000-year-old Neanderthal from El Sidrón, Spain, and a 50,000-year-old individual from Monti Lessini, Italy."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025143311.htm [/QB]
quote:Thanks for this one. Going to look more not these alleles. It's interesting how on average a Magrebian will have afro textured hair, to various degrees.
Originally posted by Antalas:
The TCHH1 gene codes for trichohyalin, a protein active in hair follicle roots. For all Taforalt individuals we find the derived homozygous AA genotype
for SNP rs17646946 in this gene, which has been associated with straighter hair in Europeans (allelic effect (ß) = 0.4-0.5, explained variance = 6.11%) (98).
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aar8380 ( supplementary text )
quote:More like an observation on her previous work going back years, long before we had these alleles to our disposal.
Originally posted by Antalas:
That's your opinion.
quote:It's indeed interesting.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Well if you want something that postdate Collin's work no problem :
The body shape of the terminal Pleistocene Jebel Sahaba population is tropical-adapted, with elongated limbs, especially in the distal segments, and is most similar to living sub-Saharan Africans and less similar to late Pleistocene and Holocene North Africans (including Egyptians and Nubians). The sample’s body shape likely reflects elevated gene flow up the Nile Valley from areas further south, but may also be due in part to the tropical hot conditions present at the site, even during glacial periods. The Jebel Sahaba sample are distinct in body shape from penecontemporary humans from Afalou-BouRhummel (Algeria) and El Wad Natufians from the southern Levant—a result consistent with the results of both Irish (2000, 2005) using dental data and Franciscus (1995, 2003) using nasal data.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oa.2315
quote:(T. W. HOLLIDAY, Population Affinities of the Jebel Sahaba Skeletal Sample: Limb Proportion Evidence)
![]()
As with the previous analysis, the North Africans are intermediate between the sub- Saharan Africans and the Europeans, whereas the Europeans tend toward longer tibiae than the Inuits.
quote:I am indeed trying to figuring out more about these migrations and specific populations, but also how these populations stood against on another in the region in cultural practices influences etc. The paper by Brotherton P and Haak W, Templeton spoke of the "Bell Beakers".
Originally posted by Antalas:
Again you mix up very different populations and Eras without taking the context into account but again these movements were not unidirectional. It's already well known that south europeans and especially Iberians have proper north african ancestry and haplotypes but it's also well known that north africans have neolithic and chalcolithic iberian ancestry. Moreover a good part of their north african ancestry is in fact medieval.
quote:A scientific consensus is based on common agreement, true. And no, I did not say Jebel irhoud are were Neanderthals. I ams speaking of the industries. Older industries are associated with Neanderthals on the African continent.
Originally posted by Antalas:
That's really far-fetched since the scientific consensus is clear about the absence of neanderthal remains in Africa. Jebel irhoud people were not neanderthals :
quote:Moreover, I never stated anything like this. Jebel irhoud was first mentioned by The Lioness. For whatever reasons, I don't know. After that you posted something about the oldest in North Africa, and based on this I inserted my post on Jebel irhoud.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Moreover you'll have to prove a genetic continuity between jebel irhoud (315±34 thousand years) and IAM (VIth-Vth millenium BC) and at the same time proving that no eurasian migrations occured during that timeframe...
quote:No, what to confirms is you being very selective in accepting data. Since you skipped over all the other data.
Originally posted by Antalas:
So it confirms that such type of admixture was brought in Africa by eurasian back migrations.
quote:1) All these papers are based on possibilities and hypothesis and theories. Not facts!
Originally posted by Antalas:
1) so it's your personal review and it's "possibilities" not facts
2) It would explain eurasian geneflow into neanderthals not neanderthal ancestry among african populations. It's not only shared alleles but proper neanderthal ancestry :
quote:Some of it can be correct and some indeed doesn't have to be. There is a reason why there's constant back and forth going on and refutations.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Moreover it would means you also don't acknowledge all the other evidence of such eurasian introgression especially when it comes to taforalt and IAM...
quote:How is that similar a contemporary SSA? But yeah as you said, they aren't even related to modern humans lol
Originally posted by Antalas:
Also why do you care so much about the pigmentation of a non homo sapiens specie ? They aren't even related to modern humans lol
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg2013303
Mendez and colleagues reported the identification of a Y chromosome haplotype (the A00 lineage) that lies at the basal position of the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree. Incorporating this haplotype, the authors estimated the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for the Y tree to be 338 000 years ago (95% CI=237 000–581 000). Such an extraordinarily early estimate contradicts all previous estimates in the literature and is over a 100 000 years older than the earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans.
quote:Yes but I was talking from a genetic point of view (taforalt samples are the oldest samples sequenced on the african continent so far).
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
Moreover, I never stated anything like this. Jebel irhoud was first mentioned by The Lioness. For whatever reasons, I don't know. After that you posted something about the oldest in North Africa, and based on this I inserted my post on Jebel irhoud.
quote:well your quote can't be more explicit than that :
Originally posted by Ish Geber: No, what to confirms is you being very selective in accepting data. Since you skipped over all the other data.
quote:
Neanderthal and Eurasian proportions are highly correlated (0.92349), suggesting that the Eurasian back-admixture is the source of all Neanderthal ancestry in North-East Africa (Figure 9C) as shown previously by Haber et al. 2016 (35).
quote:Members here seem really wary regarding all these papers as if we were back in the 1890s lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture dominate but anyway most of these people are serious and respected scholars (+ their papers are often peer-reviewed) even though that doesn't mean we should put aside our critical thinking of course.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Also why do you care so much about the pigmentation of a non homo sapiens specie ? They aren't even related to modern humans lol How is that similar a contemporary SSA? But yeah as you said, they aren't even related to modern humans lol
So to who are modern humans related?
Why I care about it, is for the same reason Eurocentrism has always cared about whitening history. I just happen to be aware of this old anthropology from the 17th, 18th and 19th century.
Doug M is right about a lot in his observation.
quote:Ok, that is where the confusion started. Have they ever attempted to sequence other specimen on the African continent, besides North Africa? We do know similar claims have been made before any genetic test was ever done on these remains, this is documented.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Yes but I was talking from a genetic point of view (taforalt samples are the oldest samples sequenced on the african continent so far).
quote:Accept how you explicitly ignored the other data and findings.
Originally posted by Antalas:
well your quote can't be more explicit than that :
quote:Because the average member on here is aware of old and in particular racist anthropological work. Most of the population genetic testing is done based on these old theories. Africans are by far underrepresenred on genetic papers.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Members here seem really wary regarding all these papers as if we were back in the 1890s lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture dominate but anyway most of these people are serious and respected scholars (+ their papers are often peer-reviewed) even though that doesn't mean we should put aside our critical thinking of course.
quote:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959437X18300558?via%3Dihub
Human genetic studies have long been vastly Eurocentric, raising a key question about the generalizability of these study findings to other populations. Because humans originated in Africa, these populations retain more genetic diversity, and yet individuals of African descent have been tremendously underrepresented in genetic studies.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0619-1
A persistent Eurocentric bias in genomic studies means that advances in genomics research stand to benefit the few, not all.
quote:https://www.inverse.com/article/54234-eurocentric-lack-of-diversity-in-genetics-research
Geneticists make those associations by drawing DNA from samples of people meant to represent a larger human population. Unfortunately, as discovered by Sarah Tishkoff, Ph.D., co-author of the commentary and human evolutionary geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, about 78 percent of that data is drawn from people of European ancestry.
quote:I don't know much about how well represented are the SSA remains but based on what I saw we do have more samples from east africa than north africa actually (from tanzania, kenya, ethiopia, sudan, etc) and I remember some samples from west africa like in the shum laka paper.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
Ok, that is where the confusion started. Have they ever attempted to sequence other specimen on the African continent, besides North Africa? We do know similar claims have been made before any genetic test was ever done on these remains, this is documented.
quote:Which other data ? I already explained you that there isn't any neanderthal remain in Africa nor do hominins who lived 600ka have anything to do with the discussion here. Moreover do not forget that vastly different populations can share the same culture.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Accept how you explicitly ignored the other data and findings.
quote:Like I said that was a long time ago and it doesn't mean that in reaction people have to adhere to movements like afrocentrism which is into darkwashing every population. These are simply two faces of the same coin. We have to stick to the facts and datas we have that's it.
Originally posted by Ish Geber: Because the average member on here is aware of old and in particular racist anthropological work. Most of the population genetic testing is done based on these old theories. Africans are by far underrepresenred on genetic papers.
This is not my opinion, but what has been confirmed by historians as well.
If you think white supremacy and Eurocentrism is gone, you are sadly mistaking and even delusional. There's something called cultural anthropology as well and it studies social phenomenons. There are many complicated implications with the claims being made in a lot of papers.
With that being said, what makes a consensus or rather "the consensus"? What happens when one collects a lot of hypothesis and suggestions, probabilities and so does that for an x-amount of time. Will this make it become a fact all of a sudden?
quote:Here they are adressing the issue of the underrepresentation of non european populations in many different domains (including the medical field) but that makes sense actually since most geneticists are european and obviously they'll be more interested to study their past. I've seen some papers actually adressing this especially in regards to north africa, we literally have more samples from the levant or east africa than NA...
Originally posted by Ish Geber:quote:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959437X18300558?via%3Dihub
Human genetic studies have long been vastly Eurocentric, raising a key question about the generalizability of these study findings to other populations. Because humans originated in Africa, these populations retain more genetic diversity, and yet individuals of African descent have been tremendously underrepresented in genetic studies.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0619-1 [/QB]
A persistent Eurocentric bias in genomic studies means that advances in genomics research stand to benefit the few, not all.
quote:Ok, so there's not such thing? I haven't heard of it nor seen it.
Originally posted by Antalas:
I don't know much about how well represented are the SSA remains but based on what I saw we do have more samples from east africa than north africa actually (from tanzania, kenya, ethiopia, sudan, etc) and I remember some samples from west africa like in the shum laka paper.
quote:Which data? Once again, I am not speaking of Neanderthal remains, I am speaking of the papers showing Neanderthal industries which are older in Africa.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Which other data ? I already explained you that there isn't any neanderthal remain in Africa nor do hominins who lived 600ka have anything to do with the discussion here. Moreover do not forget that vastly different populations can share the same culture.
quote:I am not talking about Afrocentrism, and there is not such academic effort. If anything Afrocentrism was merely an answer to Eurocentrism, so you need to get facts straight. Afrocentrism now is what is known as Africana. Neither is there as history of Afrocentrism going back centuries. What you are talking about is a few online activities and pose this a blackwashing history. lol smh
Originally posted by Antalas:
Like I said that was a long time ago and it doesn't mean that in reaction people have to adhere to movements like afrocentrism which is into darkwashing every population. These are simply two faces of the same coin.
quote:That's the thing, there isn't such thing as facts and data as you presume it to be. See every paper you've posted and they will not make such suggestions. No paper will tell you it's 100% so and so. It's not going to happen. This is why papers can be debunked, updated refuted etc. You have posted so and I have posted so. It's people who side with an agenda and opinion. And yes, this is also the case in academia.
Originally posted by Antalas:
We have to stick to the facts and datas we have that's it. .
quote:It's about the overall underrepresentation of samples. How they apply it doesn't matter, it's still an underrepresentation. No matter the field, medial, population genetics etc.
Originally posted by Antalas:
Here they are adressing the issue of the underrepresentation of non european populations in many different domains (including the medical field) but that makes sense actually since most geneticists are european and obviously they'll be more interested to study their past. I've seen some papers actually adressing this especially in regards to north africa, we literally have more samples from the levant or east africa than NA...
quote:Now you're just talking pure nonsense and you are a prime example of that gaslighting lineage. Trying to act like "blacking" history is anywhere near prevalent as the eurocentric white washing of non-European civilizations. That goes back generations in all areas of science, and supposed higher education - talking documented acts of racism through pseudoscience.
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture dominate but anyway most of these people are serious and respected scholars .
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture
quote:perfect example
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture![]()
quote:So You compare a non-realistic conventional wood bust to a forensic reconstruction made by two different labs who both reached the same results ? Moreover the nefertiti reconstruction is well done but probably doesn't depict nefertiti but a close relative.
Originally posted by TubuYal23:
quote:perfect example
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture![]()
![]()
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture
quote:You mentioned whitening, yes this Tutankhamun reconstruction is a perfect example
Originally posted by Antalas:
So You compare a non-realistic conventional wood bust to a forensic reconstruction made by two different labs who both reached the same results ?
quote:There is no whitening since the red/brown color was conventional and used in all egyptian art from the OK to the roman era. Also I don't see why you don't take tan into account ? I'm myself very white in europe but become brown in the mediterranean area. Knowing that aristocrats often protected themselves from the sun and were often living indoors it would make sense to represent him like that.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culturequote:You mentioned whitening, yes this Tutankhamun reconstruction is a perfect example
Originally posted by Antalas:
So You compare a non-realistic conventional wood bust to a forensic reconstruction made by two different labs who both reached the same results ?
Almost every depiction of a king in Egyptian art has a medium to dark brown skin tone certain not what was done here
and it is also common skin tone in modern day Egypt but the reconstruction artist chose to depict Tutankhamun with the skin tone of a Western European in a marketing attempt to make Western Europeans feel like Tutankhamun was more similar to them as far a skin tone is concerned
That is pathetic and deceptive, shame on National Geographic
quote:The supplementary notes only confirm that they are making a bunch of broad and sweeping generalizations with a little bit of data from one small region. If you go by this paper, you would think that the evolution towards farming happened first in Morocco and that pottery is potentially the result of migrations from Europe. There is no discussion of the wider archeological context of the ancient Saharan wet phase, all the pottery cultures and stone tools found there nor the older cultures of the Nile Valley.
Originally posted by Ish Geber:
quote:Doug M have you read the supplement? Carlos D. Bustamante is in there also.
Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:What is the title of the article and where in that article does it discuss evidences from outside Morocco?
Originally posted by Antalas:
Where in the paper does it says it started in NW Africa ? Moreover the Sahel isn't a north african region.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
Ancient genomes from North Africa evidence prehistoric migrations to the Maghreb from both the Levant and Europe
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2018/06/11/1800851115.DCSupplemental/pnas.1800851115.sapp.pdf
quote:And this isn't new as these a-priori ideas about "North Africa" have been around for years and even when they get data that contradicts that, they still persist with nonsensical statements about DNA. For example:
For KEB, both comparisons produced a f3-statistic negative value and the Z scores were negative and close to -3 (Figure S10.4). Although this result does not reach significance, we have to take into account we are comparing populations with low-coverage samples. Additionally, this result is also in accordance with the archaeological record, with Late Neolithic sites in North Africa presenting pottery and ivory tools similar to those associated to the Iberian Neolithic. Although this is a too simplistic model for modern populations, which were later affected by historical migrations that diluted the prehistorical European component, f3-statistic values are negative and Z scores significant for most of the North African populations, with a higher signal in those populations of the west.
As expected, TOR has more shared ancestry with Iberia_EN as well as other Neolithic and Chalcolithic population from Europe (Figure S10.1). Archaeological work in southern Iberia had suggested the existence of a specific Early Neolithic culture in southern Iberia, previous to the Cardial expansion. Because of certain similarities with farmer traditions in the Maghreb, it has been pointed out a possible North African origin for the southern Iberian Early Neolithic. From our results, we observed that TOR has a similar genetic composition than other Neolithic populations from Iberia. Based on the results observed in KEB, we propose that similarities observed between the southern Iberian pottery and farmer traditions in the Maghreb, most probably respond to European Neolithic influence in North Africa before 3,000 BCE. However, it is also possible that farmers in North Africa migrated to Europe. From the genetic point of view, the idea of this prehistoric North African influx in Iberia is sustained by the presence of old European-specific lineages of North African origin. We also observed IAM-like ancestry in modern populations from southern Europe, although that can be related to the historic Arab expansion. For testing that, we analyzed a f3-statistic test in the form f3(IAM, Anatolia_N; Test), being Test all Neolithic populations from Europe, modern southern Europe populations with IAM-like ancestry and KEB and the Canary Islands as positive controls for comparison.
quote:https://www.science.org/content/article/oldest-dna-africa-offers-clues-mysterious-ancient-culture
"The idea in the 1960s was that the Iberomaurusians must have got the microblades from the Gravettian," says co-author and archaeologist Louise Humphrey of the Natural History Museum in London. During the ice age 20,000 years ago, sea level would have been lower and the Iberomaurusians were thought to have crossed the Mediterranean by boat at Gibraltar or Sicily.
Humphrey and her Moroccan colleagues got a chance to test this view after they discovered 14 individuals associated with Iberomaurusian artifacts at the back of the Grotte des Pigeons cave in 2005. Paleogeneticists Marieke van de Loosdrecht and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (SHH) in Jena, Germany, with Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, used state-of-the-art methods to extract DNA from the ear bones of skeletons that had lain undisturbed since they were buried about 15,000 years ago. That's a major technical feat because ancient DNA degrades rapidly in warm climates; these samples are almost twice as old as any other DNA obtained from humans in Africa.
DNA in hand, Van de Loosdrecht and Choongwon Jeong, also of SHH, were able to analyze genetic material from the cell's nucleus in five people and the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA from seven people. But they found no genetic tie to ancient Europeans. Instead, the ancient Iberomaurusians appear to be related to Middle Easterners and other Africans: They shared about two-thirds of their genetic ancestry with Natufians, hunter-gatherers who lived in the Middle East 14,500 to 11,000 years ago, and one-third with sub-Saharan Africans who were most closely related to today's West Africans and the Hadza of Tanzania.
The Iberomaurusians lived before the Natufians, but they were not their direct ancestors: The Natufians lack DNA from Africa, Krause says. This suggests that both groups inherited their shared DNA from a larger population that lived in North Africa or the Middle East more than 15,000 years ago, the team reports today in Science.
As for the sub-Saharan DNA in the Iberomaurusian genome, the Iberomaurusians may have gotten it from migrants from the south who were their contemporaries. Or they may have inherited the DNA from much more ancient ancestors who brought it from the south but settled in North Africa where some of the earliest members of our species, Homo sapiens, have been found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco.
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
There is no whitening since the red/brown color was conventional and used in all egyptian art from the OK to the roman era. Also I don't see why you don't take tan into account ?
quote:^^ you posted this as examples of Egyptians
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:
Originally posted by the lioness,:
https://brill.com/view/book/9789004500228/BP000019.xml
Paleogenomics of the Neolithic Transition in North Africa,
In: Africa, the Cradle of Human Diversity
Author: Rosa Fregel
Type: Chapter
Pages: 213–235
___________________________________
New book, this chapter open access
quote:There is discussion of the Nile valley
Originally posted by Doug M:
[QB] At face value this paper is garbage as it pushes many invalid talking points that don't make any sense. First it uses Morocco as the epicenter of "North Africa" when it is not now and never has been the primary "locus" of North African populations or cultural evolution. There is no discussion of the Nile Valley,
quote:brown? lmao
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:There is no whitening since the red/brown color was conventional and used in all egyptian art from the OK to the roman era. Also I don't see why you don't take tan into account ? I'm myself very white in europe but become brown in the mediterranean area. Knowing that aristocrats often protected themselves from the sun and were often living indoors it would make sense to represent him like that.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culturequote:You mentioned whitening, yes this Tutankhamun reconstruction is a perfect example
Originally posted by Antalas:
So You compare a non-realistic conventional wood bust to a forensic reconstruction made by two different labs who both reached the same results ?
Almost every depiction of a king in Egyptian art has a medium to dark brown skin tone certain not what was done here
and it is also common skin tone in modern day Egypt but the reconstruction artist chose to depict Tutankhamun with the skin tone of a Western European in a marketing attempt to make Western Europeans feel like Tutankhamun was more similar to them as far a skin tone is concerned
That is pathetic and deceptive, shame on National Geographic
Now to illustrate this :
That's me in NW Europe during winter
And that's me after only 1 week under the mediterranean climate :
![]()
quote:https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bd0e66f8d97400eb0099556/t/5bdaf4b3032be4a79cb9e6bd/1541076148203/Nyame+Akuma+Issue+046-Article+10.pdf
Definition of the Problem
Marginal and arid environments, particularly tose of North Africa, represent stimulating places to analyze past human adaptive strategies. One of the problems most hotly debated is the emergence of domestication. The antiquity of domestic cattle in some sites, like at Uan Mhuggiag in the Tadrart Acacus (Mori 1961) has been often used to invoke a process of autonomous domestication in the Sarara, independent of the Near East. in this paper we wish to discuss the relationships between human groups and animal resources in the Tadrart Acacus mountain range during the Early Holocene(Figure 1), independently of the general poblem of domestication (Gautier 1990;Smith 1992). We will deal with the identification of particular forms of wild animal management during the "pre pastoral" period (i.e. 9,000 - 7,500 BP years).
....
Final Remarks
The case-study of Uan Afuda, and other sites in the central Acacus, helps to identify the existence of animal management in an eary Holocene phase. Morphology of corpolites, presence of spherulites and areas of animal shelter all point to th edwelling of wild ovicaprids. Since probably there are no wild ancestors for domestic sheep and goats in the ara and Ammotragus lervia is the only referable species present in the archaeozoological record, we sugest the hypothesis of Barbary sheep taming during this phase. Actually the hypothesis of controlling a potentially domesticable species like Ammotragus lervia is not new (Saxon 1976), even if Barbary Sheep was not the genetic base of African domestic ovicaprids(Smith 1992). Management of animals does not mean domestication, also in our view, but rational control of animal resources, which may not produce any morphologically domesticated animals. Such behavior is not rare in the ethnographic record: we can recall activities of driving and containing animals such as bison, deer and antelope in North America (Chang and Koster 1986); the interaction between reindeer and humans in North Europe (Ingold 1980), and other operations in which wild animals ae used by human groups to perform specialised activities like hunting. Finally, we should take into account th presence of rock-ar as an extraordinary indicator of tese processes (Figure 6). Customary scenes between humans and Barbary sheep are recorded on the southern wall of Uan Afuda cave; careful representations of pregnant specimens and suckling are well represented in the eary Round Head paintings at In Taharin; such representations could be related to a strict inter-relation between animals and humans.
quote:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3786551/
Neither the Early or Late Acacus layers in the Acacus Mountain range contain Bos remains (Cremaschi & Di Lernia, 1999). The integration of domesticated Bos and ovicaprids into the culture of the subsequent Early Pastoral inhabitants was facilitated by the socio-economic organisation of the Late Acacus (Cremaschi & Di Lernia, 1999), with its broad-based economy and wild Barbary sheep kept in shelter enclosures (Di Lernia, 2001). Bone tools and ceramic breakages attest to the presence of cattle herds, as do rock art scenes depicting cattle herds on many walls of the Acacus Mountains (Barich, 1987; Di Lernia, 2002; Garcea, 2001; Mori, 1965).
Rapid technological innovation to enhance subsistence activities, diversification of the food base, demographic and socio-economic reorganisation, and abandonment introduces the question, not addressed here, of whether cattle tumuli in the Central and Eastern Sahara were the product of independent, local evolutionary processes. Theoretical and practical issues regarding the timing and causes of the cultural trajectories, influenced by changing climatic conditions, rests on the availability of a representative set of high resolution radiometric dates, preferably AMS, enabling micro-analysis of the form, speed and duration of the changes.
quote:
" Introduction
The Neolithic revolution, which is the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, started in the Near East around 13,000 BCE. How human populations acquired agricultural and herding technologies has historically been the focus of a heated debate...
the Mesolithic Capsian culture appeared in the Maghreb, transitioning to farming communities in the 6th millennia BCE (Naylor 2015)...
Conclusion
Late Neolithic individuals from Morocco are characterized by a mixture of both the autochthonous Maghrebi component and gene flow from early farmers in Europe. Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome lineages in North African Late Neolithic are different from those in previous periods and have a clear affiliation to early farmers in the Near East and Europe. Genome-wide data indicate that Late Neolithic communities in Morocco had a Neolithic European component, most probably related to the migration of early farmers from Iberia. Genetic evidence from the indigenous people of the Canary Islands suggests that the impact of the European Neolithic gene flow could have been heterogeneous and that additional European ancestry could have reached North Africa between the 4th millennium BCE and the 1st century CE, probably related to the expansion of the Bell-Beaker culture in the Mediterranean.
quote:Your implication is that what they are saying is racist, that Africans were too stupid to figure out farming so Europeans brought it in.
Originally posted by Doug M:
To me as I said even when the EEF paper came out, these people want to completely remove Africa from the equation of the evolution towards farming.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01681-w
The people who built these monumental structures were living just before a major transition in human history: the Neolithic revolution, when humans began farming and domesticating crops and animals. But there are no signs of domesticated grain at Göbekli Tepe, suggesting that its residents hadn’t yet made the leap to farming. The ample animal bones found in the ruins prove that the people living there were accomplished hunters, and there are signs of massive feasts. Archaeologists have suggested that mobile bands of hunter-gatherers from all across the region came together at times for huge barbecues, and that these meaty feasts led them to build the impressive stone structures.
Now that view is changing, thanks to researchers such as Laura Dietrich at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. Over the past four years, Dietrich has discovered that the people who built these ancient structures were fuelled by vat-fulls of porridge and stew, made from grain that the ancient residents had ground and processed on an almost industrial scale1. The clues from Göbekli Tepe reveal that ancient humans relied on grains much earlier than was previously thought — even before there is evidence that these plants were domesticated. And Dietrich’s work is part of a growing movement to take a closer look at the role that grains and other starches had in the diet of people in the past.
...
Some of the earliest evidence for plant domestication, for example, comes from einkorn wheat grains recovered from a site near Göbekli Tepe that are subtly different in shape and genetics from wild varieties2. At Göbekli Tepe itself, the grains look wild, suggesting that domestication hadn’t taken place or was in its earliest stages. (Archaeologists suspect that it might have taken centuries for domestication to alter the shape of grains.)
Direct proof that plants landed in cooking pots is harder to come by. To work out what people were eating, archaeologists are turning to previously ignored sources of evidence, such as charred bits of food. They’re the mistakes of the past: stews and porridge left on the fire for too long, or bits of bread dropped in the hearth or burnt in the oven. “Anyone who’s cooked a meal knows sometimes it burns,” says Lucy Kubiak-Martens, an archaeobotanist working for BIAX Consult Biological Archaeology & Environmental Reconstruction in Zaandam, the Netherlands.
quote:https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=penn_museum_papers
The Beginnings of Agriculture: The Ancient Near East and North Africa The Beginnings of Agriculture: The Ancient Near East and North Africa
Abstract Abstract
The Sumerians may have said it best: “Food: That’s the thing! Drink: That’s the thing!” (Gordon 1959: 142). From bread and beer to wine and cheese, the people of the ancient Near East and North Africa developed a rich cuisine based on a set of crops and livestock domesticated in Southwest Asia, and a sophisticated technology of food preparation and preservation. This chapter traces the history of diet and food of hunter-gatherers who lived at the end of the Stone Age in the Near East and North Africa, the impact of the development and the spread of agriculture, and the social context of food and drink in early
Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization.
quote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_Kubbaniya
Discovered at the site were barley, lentils, chickpeas (or at least what they thought were chickpeas), and einkorn wheat.[1] Of the plants discovered and identified at the Wadi Kubbaniya site, one of them stood out- barley. A sample was taken from a hearth and sent off for identification.[2] From the sample, there were five grains, which were later identified as barley and einkorn wheat. Based on morphology, archaeologists could not definitively say whether these grains were domesticated or wild.[4] However, archaeologists believed that these cereals could not have grown well without the assistance of humans.[5] Therefore, if cereals were found at this site, and archaeologists believed that cereals could not survive without the intentional act of humans, this meant that this was a site of early farming and cultivation. The einkorn wheat is also commonly seen as a weed that accompanies Near Eastern crops.[1] What bolstered their claim even more was the stone tools discovered. These tools were found with what they hypothesized to be as sickle sheen on them, which can be an indication of agricultural use.[2] Archaeologists used these data and hypotheticals to propose the hypothesis that Wadi Kubbaniya is the earliest known site for agriculture.
However, through further investigation it was determined that the barley found was actually wild and was not an indication of early agriculture taking place at Wadi Kubbaniya.[1] The lentils, which were uncharred, could not have been from any site earlier than 3000B.C.[1] What they thought were chickpeas ended up being a wild plant that is still found on the Nile today.[1] Despite their hypothesis of early agriculture proving false, the time spent on recovering and studying samples has still proven useful. Due to their convictions of Wadi Kubbaniya being one of the earliest sites for agriculture, there was much time and effort put into carefully excavating plant remains from the soil.[2] There is now a large and diverse collection of plant remains from Wadi Kubbaniya that tells us more about the area, hunter-gatherers, and possibly other Late Paleolithic sites in Egypt.
quote:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-017-9264-0
Grinding-Stones in the African Archaeological Record
African archaeological assemblages attest to the importance of grinding-stones for pounding vegetative matter and other materials since the first appearance of anatomically modern humans and continuing into current times (e.g., Ambrose 1998; Clark and Kleindienst 2001; De Beaune 1993; Leakey 1971; Maguire 1965; Rosso et al. 2016; Van Peer et al. 2003; Yellen et al. 1995). There are, of course, differences between the grinding-stone tool repertoires used by foragers during the Middle Stone Age and those used more recently in Africa. In general, there has been a proliferation of grinding-stone tool forms used for activities other than “pounding” and “pestling” (de Beaune 2004). Yet there is also evidence for deep continuity and resilience in tool-use traditions. Grinding-stone tools have been grinding ochre for hundreds of millennia (Zipkin et al. 2016). Grinding-stones may have even been used in the processing of wild cereal grains such as sorghum as early as ca. 100,000 years ago (Mercader 2009; Nic Eoin 2016). Intensification in the use of resources and incorporation of plant species into livelihoods and culinary ranges throughout African history has no doubt been influenced by millennia of related processing and consumption traditions involving grinding-stone tools.
quote:https://phys.org/news/2017-01-people-cooking-pots-years.html
We have now identified the first evidence for cooking plants in early prehistoric cooking vessels from the Libyan Sahara around 10,000 years ago.
It's hard to imagine now, but the arid desert of today's Sahara was a vastly different place back then. Known as the "Green Sahara", it comprised vast grasslands roamed by extensive herds of large game and species such as elephant and giraffe. Large rivers and lakes were home to crocodile and hippopotamus. Groups of hunter-gatherers lived across the region, exploiting these abundant resources. Later, domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and goat appeared in North Africa and the people adopted a pastoral way of life, moving with their animals in search of water and grazing.
Analysing 10,000-year-old pottery from two archaeological sites in the Libyan Sahara, we found evidence of the cooking of several different plant types. The technique we used is called organic residue analysis, and uses information from chemicals preserved within the fabric of unglazed cooking pots. These chemicals are the fats, oils and waxes of the natural world, and their specific make up tells us whether they come from an animal carcass or milk fats, or fish, or plants.
quote:(Ki-Zerbo,J. (1981). Unesco General History of Africa Vol. 1: Methodology and African Prehistory)
“Between 139kya and 125kya the Neanderthals migrated back into africa and spread from Morocco to East Africa (Ki-Zerbo, 1981,p.572).
The African Neanderthal people used the common Levoiso-Mousterian tool kit originally discovered in Europe. The Neanderthal skeletons mainly come from Djebel Irhoud and El Guettar (Ki-Zerbo,1981). Later Neanderthal people used the Aterian tool kit.”
quote:The cultivation of millet in Vhina follows its cultivation at Nabta playa
Originally posted by the lioness,:
http://elib.sfu-kras.ru/bitstream/handle/2311/135259/07_Vostretsov.pdf;jsessionid=31663E3B600E0CE0A49B2259F07BA461?sequence=1
Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences
2021 14(1): 98–110
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-0573
УДК 902
Searching for the Origin of Agriculture in East Asia
Yurii E. Vostretsov*
Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology
of the Peoples of the Far-East
Far-Eastern Branch of the RAS
Vladivostok, Russian Federation
Received 09.10.2019, r
What did the early farmers cultivate? According to isotope analysis of bones, about 8,000
cal PB in the lower reaches of the Huang He river
at the Xiaojigshan site, millet already accounted
for 25% of men and women’s diet. At the nearby
sites located in the northern foothills of Shandong, Jiahu (the Peiligang culture) only rice is
known, and at the Yuezhuang site (the Houli culture), dated AMS 7,900 cal BP, 40 seeds of common millet, one seed of foxtail millet, and 26 rice seeds were found. Rice was also cultivated on the
south of the mouth of the present-day Yangtze river at the Kuahuqiao site, which functioned 7,900–
7,000 cal BP (Cohen, 2011: 287; Liu, Chen, 2012:
76–80). Considering the reconstruction of that
period (Fig. 4), the question, how cultivated, but
possibly not yet fully cultivated rice, appeared on the sites that were significantly separated by the
ingression bay, arises.
______________________
there are some interesting details in this article
quote:Nice article.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
There is also independent development of technology
where the technology is discovered independently at different times in different places without it necessarily being transmitted from one to the other
However
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-018-9314-2#Sec13
On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel
2018
Frank Winchell, Michael Brass, Andrea Manzo, Alemseged Beldados, Valentina Perna, Charlene Murphy, Chris Stevens & Dorian Q. Fuller
African Archaeological Review volume 35, pages483–505
Four decades have passed since Harlan and Stemler (1976) proposed the eastern Sahelian zone as the most likely center of Sorghum bicolor domestication. Recently, new data on seed impressions on Butana Group pottery, from the fourth millennium BC in the southern Atbai region of the far eastern Sahelian Belt in Africa, show evidence for cultivation activities of sorghum displaying some domestication traits. Pennisetum glaucum may have been undergoing domestication shortly thereafter in the western Sahel, as finds of fully domesticated pearl millet are present in southeastern Mali by the second half of the third millennium BC, and present in eastern Sudan by the early second millennium BC. The dispersal of the latter to India took less than 1000 years according to present data. Here, we review the middle Holocene Sudanese archaeological data for the first time, to situate the origins and spread of these two native summer rainfall cereals in what is proposed to be their eastern Sahelian Sudan gateway to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean trade.
Wild sorghum also appears to have been a favorite in the Western Desert of Egypt alongside several smaller millet grasses, at sites such as Nabta Playa E-75-6 (8000–7000 BC), Farafra Oasis (ca. 5900 BC), Dakhleh Oasis (ca. 6400–5600 BC), and Abu Ballas (ca. 4000 BC) (Barakat and Fahmy 1999; Thanheiser 2011; Wasylikowa and Dahlberg 1999).
Both domesticated cereals, pearl millet and sorghum, appear to have been grown together in the far eastern Sahel, certainly by the start of the second millennium BC (Mahal Teglinos in Eastern Sudan near Kassala, 1850 BC median age) and possibly even earlier (Shaqadud Cave? in Central Sudan), prior to being transferred to India via emerging Arabian Sea maritime connections. Taken together, these lines of evidence highlight a series of dynamic societies and subsistence innovators across the Saharan and Sahelian belt, through southern Arabia and semi-arid India that developed new cultivation economies quite distinct from those of western Asia and the Mediterranean.
____________________________
this article argues an earlier date but says
"...which probably came from the north of the Nile Valley."
although probably is not certain
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110177
Microbotanical Evidence of Domestic Cereals in Africa 7000 Years Ago
Marco Madella 2014
Abstract
The study of plant exploitation and early use of cereals in Africa has seen over the years a great input from charred and desiccated macrobotanical remains. This paper presents the results of one of the few examples in Africa of microbotanical analyses. Three grave contexts of phytolith-rich deposits and the dental calculus of 20 individuals were analysed from two Neolithic cemeteries in North and Central Sudan. The radiocarbon-dated phytoliths from the burial samples show the presence of Near East domestic cereals in Northern Sudan at least 7000 years ago. Phytoliths also indicate the exploitation of wild, savannah-adapted millets in Central Sudan between 7500 and 6500 years ago. The calculus samples contained starch grains from wheat/barley, pulses and millets, as well as panicoid phytoliths. This evidence shows that Near East domestic cereals were consumed in Northern Africa at least 500 years earlier than previously thought.
Discussion
The vegetal material recovered from these Neolithic Sudanese cemeteries originates from the plant exploitation strategies of human groups inhabiting the Nile Valley during the Mid-Holocene. The phytolith evidence from Ghaba's graves highlights broad spectrum exploitation of local grasses (mostly panicoids) from savannah-like environments, while the R12 sample reveals the use of cereals (wheat/barley), which probably came from the north of the Nile Valley. At the same time, the analysis of the dental calculus from several individuals from both cemeteries indicates that local grasses and domestic cereals were directly used as part of the diet of the people of Ghaba and R12. Additionally, the microfossils indicate the dietary presence of legumes and other non-identifiable sources, which might have included local tubers.
The grave samples from R12 are dominated by phytoliths from chaff of wheat/barley. The scarcity of papillae in the silica skeletons prevents a meaningful statistical analysis that would identify the remains at species level [36]. However, the wheat/barley phytoliths can be interpreted as originating from domesticated plants because their wild ancestors are missing from the region [1]. Based on published macrobotanical data from Neolithic Egypt – Merimde [1] and Fayum [2] – these finds hypothetically concern emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccon (Schrank) Thell.) and hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). The direct date from one of the cereal phytolith concentrations (grave 46; 5311–5066 cal BC) shows that the evidence of domestic cereals from R12 pre-date the cereal finds from the Fayum and Merimde in Egypt (dated at after 4500 cal BC) and the earliest finds of barley from Kadruka 1 in Sudan (c. 4500–4000 cal BC) [40]. This implies that domesticated wheat and barley were available in regions of Egypt and Sudan at least 500 years earlier than previously thought. This confirms an earlier spread of the Near East type of agriculture towards the south. The R12 Mid-Holocene environment and river dynamics were sufficiently similar to the north Nile Valley to allow for flooding cultivation [18]. Furthermore, the early acceptance of cereals in Nubia can be attributed to people in this region being already familiar with wild grass exploitation. This probably resulted in the quick adoption of other plants, such as domesticated cereals coming from the Near East.
quote:They say that they need aDNA to uncover the role of migrations and the impact on ancient prehistoric populations and call out the lack of data on Africa. Yet at the same time have no problem making sweeping statements regardless.
In this context, aDNA studies are ideal to study migration history by directly accessing the genetic variation of pre-historic individuals, and comparing this variation to other pre-historic individuals from different temporal and geographic contexts and also to modern-day populations. However, due to the difficulty in extracting DNA from human samples from warm climates and the initial focus on European aDNA studies, genome-wide aDNA studies in Africa presently number only few (Table 1). Only nine ancient genome-wide studies of African individuals have been published thus far: four for North Africa and five for sub-Saharan Africa (Table 1). Here, we examined the results of aDNA studies from continental Africa published to date, in the context of modern-day genetic variation (Figure 1).
quote:They say that the genes from 15kya in Morocco show "Eurasian" gene flow, but the actual paper on that DNA does not say that. It says the exact opposite. Yet they have no problem stating this. Then they just go on to make the broad sweeping claim that "Eurasians" swept across Africa and somehow made it into the Sahara, even though they later claim it was "impassible". So they are pushing this narrative even though they don't have the data to back it up.
Ancient DNA in North Africa
In North Africa, modern-day groups are largely related to Eurasian and Middle Eastern populations, with very low levels of genetic contributions from sub-Saharan Africa (blue dots, Figure 1) [15,16]. A debate existed whether this was the result of Paleolithic back-to-Africa migrations, or migrations connected to the introduction of farming practices to North Africa during the Neolithic [15,17]. A study on 15 kya old remains from Morocco (blue diamonds, Figure 1) demonstrated that Northern Africa received significant amounts of gene-flow from Eurasia predating the Holocene and development of farming practices [11]. aDNA studies further found that Early Neolithic North Africans (~7 kya) trace their ancestry to these Paleolithic North African groups [12], while Late Neolithic groups (~5 kya) contained an Iberian component, indicating trans-Gibraltar gene-flow. These two different signals in Early and Late Neolithic individuals, indicate that the spread of farming practices in North Africa involved both the movement of ideas and people.
The Sahara poses a geographic barrier to human migration, aside from intermittent greening periods [18]. Studies on modern-day populations [15,16] and aDNA from Egyptian mummies [13] indicated that gene-flow from the south, across the Sahara into modern-day North Africans, were low and appeared in recent times. More ancient individuals from Morocco, however, seem to have had higher affinities to sub-Saharan Africans [11,12] (Figure 1b). The Paleolithic (15 kya) and Early Neolithic (7 kya) individuals lived before and during the most recent Green Sahara period (stretching from 12 kya to 5 kya), and yet they have similar genetic compositions with similar affinities to sub-Saharan Africa, while modern-day North Africans have very little sub-Saharan African contribution. Consequently the cycling of the Sahara through its wet and dry phases seems to have had an influence on amount of gene-flow between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, although the exact dynamics of those migrations needs to be further investigated, ideally through genome-wide aDNA studies.
quote:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X20300599
Sub-Saharan Africa
Modern and ancient DNA studies for sub-Saharan Africa indicated that this part of the continent had two very different phases in its history (Figure 2) (Reviewed in Ref. [19]). During deep history, before the invention of farming practices, hunter-gather groups seemed to have been related in an 'isolation-by-distance' fashion where geographic location closely reflected genetic relatedness of groups [7,20]. Although long distance migrations by hunter-gatherers in the past cannot be ruled out, more research in this regard is needed and aDNA studies will be invaluable to test this. The early history of the African continent is in stark contrast with the large population movements, within relatively short time periods, that followed the invention of farming practices in Africa (Figure 2) [19,21]. The origins of food producing practices in Africa are still unclear but it is believed that crop cultivation was developed independently, in at least three regions: the Sahara/Sahel (around 7 kya), the Ethiopian highlands (~7-4 kya), and Western Africa (~5-3 kya)[3,22]. From these centers, farming practices spread to the rest of Africa, with domesticated animals reaching the southern tip of Africa around 2 kya and crop farming around 1.8 kya [3]. Genomic investigations of present-day and past humans contributed to hypotheses regarding the spread of farming groups in Africa.
quote:Keep in mind that this "paper" on African DNA history is part of a larger paper on human genetics and origins but of course, nowhere do they show how humans migrated out of Africa genetically and around the world. Somehow that part is left out and we get the genetic history of Africa starting with "back migrations" form Europe and a chart full of question marks concerning the genetics prior to this "back migration". Like how can you even publish something like that claiming to be getting to the genetic origins of humans?
African population history before and after farming. (a) Map of major pre-farming population stratification across the African continent, showing non-Africans and North Africans (blue), East Africans (yellow), West Africans (gray), Central African rainforest hunter gatherers (green), and Southern African Khoe-San hunter-gatherers (red). (b) Migration routes related to the expansion of herders and crop farmers during the Holocene. The gray arrows represent the Bantu expansion, blue arrows represent the Eurasian back-migrations, brown/blue arrow represents the southward migration of admixed East African-Eurasian pastoralists, and gray/brown arrow represents bidirectional migration along the Sahel belt. Abbreviation: kya thousand years ago.
quote:Your quotes are hard to follow because you dont speak of the authors by name and your quotes dont have citations on them
Originally posted by Doug M:
They say that the genes from 15kya in Morocco show "Eurasian" gene flow, but the actual paper on that DNA does not say that. It says the exact opposite.
quote:_______________________________________
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X20300599#fig0005
African population history: an ancient DNA perspective
MárioVicente1
Carina M Schlebusc
A study on 15 kya old remains from Morocco (blue diamonds, Figure 1) demonstrated that Northern Africa received significant amounts of gene-flow from Eurasia predating the Holocene and development of farming practices [11••].
quote:What they are calling a 36.5% sub-Saharan ancestral component in Morocco 15kya at Taforalt
Population history of North Africa based on modern and ancient genomes
Marcel Lucas-Sánchez et al, 2021
The retrieval of stone artifacts and cutmarked bones from an archeological site in Algeria places the first peopling of North Africa around 2.4 million years ago (28), whereas direct bone dating of the oldest human remains from the Moroccan site of Jebel Irhoud points to 300 thousand years ago (ka) (9). Many more fossils have been recovered in North Africa (29) but only for a few of them it has been possible to extract and analyze their genome. The Taforalt site in Morocco (dated between 15 100 and 13 900 calibrated years before present) is the oldest site to date to yield DNA data, not only in North Africa but in Africa as a whole. The analyzed Taforalt individuals show high affinity toward Near Eastern populations, especially Epipaleolithic Natufians, with whom they share 63.5% of their ancestry on average. These individuals present mtDNA haplogroups U6 and M1, concordant with the pre-Holocene back-to-Africa event (22,26,30). An ancient sub-Saharan ancestral component is also present, showing a higher affinity with Taforalt than with any combination of Yoruba–Natufian ancestry. Also, no gene flow from Paleolithic Europeans is observed (22).
quote:You're absolutely right.
Originally posted by Swenet:
I'm saying the subclade that made its way to Africa stopped in the Levant, first. The Romanian individual belongs to another subclade. Both subclades originate with a parent population that migrated from Asia.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/srep25501
The analysis of the PM1 mitogenome polymorphisms revealed 15 nucleotide changes with respect to the rCRS28, identifying the PM1 mitogenome as a basal haplogroup U6* (Supplementary Table 1). One of these polymorphisms is a private mutation, T10517A, not previously found in any mitochondrial genome.
^This individual's mtDNA did not give birth to African U6, if that's what you're thinking.
quote:Indeed perfect.
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:So You compare a non-realistic conventional wood bust to a forensic reconstruction made by two different labs who both reached the same results ? Moreover the nefertiti reconstruction is well done but probably doesn't depict nefertiti but a close relative.
Originally posted by TubuYal23:
quote:… perfect example
Originally posted by the lioness,:
[qb] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture
...
quote:That was the last and my final post on Nefer. We can continue with the original topic on paleogenomics of neolithic populations.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
Ish you are continuing a diversion to the thread
I have a recent thread on Nefertiti
if possible please take that post over there.
I have a comment about it but this thread is supposed to be Maghreb focused, thanks
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=010507
code:Haplogroup U
nodes U1'5'6
U2'4'7'8
sub-nodes U1'5
U6
clade U6
sub-clades U6a'b
U6c
para-clade U6*
quote:.
Lineages that are not defined on the basis of a derived character represent interior
nodes of the haplogroup tree and are potentially paraphyletic (i.e., they are comprised
of basal lineages and monophyletic subclades). Thus, we suggest the term “paragroup”
rather than haplogroup to describe these lineages. Paragroups are distinguished from
haplogroups (i.e., monophyletic groupings) by using the * (star) symbol, which represents
chromosomes belonging to a clade but not its subclades. For example, paragroup B* belongs
to the B clade; however, it does not fall into haplogroup B1 or B2. As illustrated in Figure
Figure2,2, internal nodes are highly sensitive to changes in tree topology. Thus, the * symbol
cautions that a given paragroup name may refer to different sets of chromosomes in succeeding
versions of the phylogeny.
The Y Chromosome Consortium (2002)
A Nomenclature System for the Tree of Human Y-Chromosomal Binary Haplogroups
quote:
![]()
quote:In my opinion it is misleading to use a different or amended term for an individual on a chart who is just descendant of that clade and not a descendant of one of it's later mutations.
Originally posted by Tukuler:
Figure 1. Phylogenetic analyses of the Peştera Muierii-1 (PM1) mitogenome (35 Kcal BP, Romania).
(B) Unconstrained Bayesian phylogenetic analysis including ancient and present-day H. sapiens.
The tree is time-calibrated using node ages. The color of node dots indicates the posterior probability (pp):
green dots = maximum robustness, yellow dots = slight robustness, red dots = low robustness.
code:No opinion about it just the data.U 57,000 years before present
U6 50,000 ybp
U6a'b'c 48,000 ybp
U6a'b 43,000 ybp
U6a 36,000 ypb
U6* in PM1 35,000 ybp not enough known now to add a letter after the U6 like defined clades
U6b 28,000 ybp
U6c 14,000 ybp
quote:.
Originally posted by Swenet:
I'm saying the subclade that made its way to Africa stopped in the Levant, first.
The Romanian individual belongs to another subclade.
Both subclades originate with a parent population that migrated from Asia.
quote:https://www.nature.com/articles/srep25501
The analysis of the PM1 mitogenome polymorphisms revealed 15 nucleotide changes with respect to the rCRS28, identifying the PM1 mitogenome as a basal haplogroup U6* (Supplementary Table 1). One of these polymorphisms is a private mutation, T10517A, not previously found in any mitochondrial genome.
^This individual's mtDNA did not give birth to African U6, if that's what you're thinking.
quote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83JR2IoI8k
Our estimates of the haplogroup U6 TMRCA that incorporate ancient genomes (including PM1)
set the formation of the U6 lineage back to 49.6 ky BP (95% HPD: 42–58 ky)
(using a mutation rate of 2.06* 10−8 SD = 1.94 * 10−9) (Fig. 1).
quote:false
Originally posted by Tukuler:
The dead Roumanian known as sample PM1
belongs to a paragroup younger than U6a
quote:True PM1 is an individual who carried the basal
Originally posted by Tukuler:
Yes PM1 is basal.
quote:false
Originally posted by Tukuler:
Yes PM1 is basal.
That just means it's an outlier.
It doesn't mean the base/foundation/origin.
quote:.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:false
Originally posted by Tukuler:
The dead Roumanian known as sample PM1
belongs to a paragroup younger than U6a
PM1 is of haplogroup U6
You can call it basal or paragroup
that doesn't matter
U6 existed before U6a
I'm wondering if you are just intentionally trolling here
quote:True PM1 is an individual who carried the basal
Originally posted by Tukuler:
Yes PM1 is basal.
earliest known form of U6
quote:false
Originally posted by Tukuler:
Yes PM1 is basal.
That just means it's an outlier.
It doesn't mean the base/foundation/origin.
"basal" does not mean "outlier"
Basal clades in modern populations are often very rare because they are older
PM1 was an individual in Romania of the U6 haplogroup which is older that is older than U6a
which is a later point when it split at an unknown location
This is proven by mutations present in U6a that are not in U6, hence "a" added
This is not a nomenclature or chart issue.
It is verified by mutations identified in each clade
quote:don't be silly
Originally posted by Tukuler: U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA.
quote:
Our estimates of the haplogroup U6 TMRCA that incorporate ancient genomes (including PM1)
set the formation of the U6 lineage back to 49.6 ky BP (95% HPD: 42–58 ky)
(using a mutation rate of 2.06* 10−8 SD = 1.94 * 10−9) (Fig. 1).
The age of Roumanian or Morocco remains has nothing to do
with it except to impress those unfamiliar with the genetics
to favor persons opinions over data and definitions.
quote:.
Originally posted by Tukuler:
1) PM1 does not carry "the oldest known form of U6", whatever that means.
2) PM1 is/was the oldest known human remains carrying U6. Quite different.
The facts remain
3) PM1's U6 was branched a paraclade, U6*,
4) due to new and private mutation, T10517A, and only two U6 diagnostic mutations.
5) PM1's U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA.
Write conchi.delarua@ehu.eus to confirm those five statements.
Nuff said. I'm gonna shut up and listen for ESers with proven background.
Look at R-V4963
Note its paragroup branch
follows its haplogroup node as an outlier
then come its defined clade branches
quote:__________________________________________________
Originally posted by the lioness,:
Related thread, 2018
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=009885;p=1
The peopling of the last Green Sahara revealed by high-coverage resequencing of trans-Saharan patrilineages
Also by Eugenia D’Atanasio
![]()
Sorry to include this but theLioness is well known
to alter her previous posts or to even delete them.
So for the sake of an intact record w/o fudgery
All can see she deliberately twisted my precise wording
PM1's U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA
into
U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA
eliminating PM1's from her supposed quote
and dared lie and say that it's from me.
Does the forum Mod approve of such alterations where the issue is fact over personality?
Can't anyone make theLioness stop deliberately misquoting people just to make debate points?
How can anyone expect to learn science facts in this forum with such behavior going on.
A serious impediment to surfers taking what's said on ES as factual or serious.
quote:don't be silly
Originally posted by the lioness,:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tukuler: U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA.
when have you ever seen a Haplogroup such as U6
that is followed by a lowercase letter >
U6a meaning a subclade
when have you ever seen that came Phylogenetically before an asterisked paraclade of the basal?
U6*
^ these asterisked paragroups contain the required
mutations for the basal clade (yes that does mean founding)
and you are never going to see one of those lower case subclades "a" "b" before the asterisk version in a phylogeny
> and you know this, stop playing games to get attention
![]()
^ U6* , ancestor to U6
and the various, a, b,c, d that are further down the timeline
PM1 of Romania one of the descendants of U6 with the required mutations 3348 and 16172
the private mutation it also has does not change that
None of this is surprising since the Romanian remains are over twice as old as the Moroccan.
And notice how the Godmother of the whole U clan has an asterisk
quote:It would be embarrassing to email de la Rúa with these wrong statements of yours that's why you are trying to get me to do it
Originally posted by Tukuler:
The facts remain
1) PM1's U6 was branched a paraclade, U6*,
2) due to new and private mutation, T10517A, and only two U6 diagnostic mutations.
3) PM1's U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA.
quote:There is nothing "negroid" about the sphinx it's just a broken statue and it used to depict the face of the pharaoh khephren who looked like this :
Originally posted by Yatunde Lisa:
@Antalas
Sphinx Las Vegas
Sphinx Australia
Negroid Sphinx 1864 Egypt
quote:.
Originally posted by Antalas:
quote:So You compare a non-realistic conventional wood bust to a forensic reconstruction made by two different labs who both reached the same results ? Moreover the nefertiti reconstruction is well done but probably doesn't depict nefertiti but a close relative.
Originally posted by TubuYal23:
quote:perfect example
Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:
Originally posted by Antalas:
lol I don't think there is any whitening history today in our post-colonial era where actually PC and cancel culture![]()
![]()
quote:The Nat Geo study which the pie chart is based on autosomal markers not uniparental markers. That they called the predominant marker 'North African' as opposed to the other Eurasian groups listed is very telling. I don't know if the classification is based on ANA or not since you seem to have a problem with that term, but don't forget that there are many African genetic substructures that are not fully fleshed out yet.
Originally posted by the lioness,:
The magazine Cairo Scene published that pie chart
that may have been their own chart
but supposedly based on Nat Geo
They have a link to Nat Geo but it is dead. So there is no way to verify that pie chart as being Nat Geo and searching for such an article does not come up with anything so I hesitate to even call that Nat Geo information. It could also be something Nat Geo retracted.
Some Egyptians may also have a vested interest "No we are not foreign occupying Arabs we are native Egyptians"
In my opinion it's a mix of the two
____________________________________
https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy200972
Published in final edited form as:
Heredity (Edinb). 2009 Nov; 103(5): 425–433.
PMCID: PMC2869035
EMSID: UKMS27159
PMID: 19639002
Genetic structure of nomadic Bedouin from Kuwait
T. Mohammad,
In this analysis, almost all individuals demonstrated membership of multiple clusters, but some populations displayed membership of predominant clusters that corresponded to geographical affiliation. For example, Adima Muslim Egyptians (63%) and Coptic Egyptians (65%) showed a distinct “North African” cluster (Figure 1b, red colour).
______________________________
^^ I never said this was the source of the pie chart either. This is an article that says
Adima Muslim Egyptians (63%) and Coptic Egyptians (65%) showed a distinct “North African” cluster
The question is how are they defining "North African"
You can read the who article I hadn't seen them defining it.
Articles in past few years define North Africa mitochondrial lineage as Eurasian, including U6, H ,R0, HV, M1
So they call this "North African" despite not being African nd this in combination with E clades on the paternal side
This term "ANA" h=is not being used by these researchers who have been putting out a lot of articles on North African in the past few years so I hesitate to even call "ANA" a term
what it basically means is Iberomaurusian/ Taforalt
and Taforalt is E1b1b + U6 (also some M1)
quote:And yet the same theLioness has the nerve to scurtinize others' posts! Talk about diabolical hypocrisy. Who granted theLioness moderator status anyway? I even recall you Tukuler yourself dreaded the very thought that I would be moderator. Again, I never wanted the job and still don't since I have too much time elsewhere. That said, even if I did become moderator I would never be so brazen as to censor the posts of others to fit my personal agenda. Call me old school but I still appreciate old style message boards like this for the relative freedom of information compared to the newer ones, but we will be damned if we let some agent subvert all that we accomplished in the years of this forum, with science still catching up to confirm what was expressed here first!
Originally posted by Tukuler:
...
The peopling of the last Green Sahara revealed by high-coverage resequencing of trans-Saharan patrilineages
Also by Eugenia D’Atanasio
__________________________________________________
Sorry to include this but theLioness is well known
to alter her previous posts or to even delete them.
So for the sake of an intact record w/o fudgery
All can see she deliberately twisted my precise wording
PM1's U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA
into
U6* TMRCA is younger than U6a TMRCA
eliminating PM1's from her supposed quote
and dared lie and say that it's from me.
Does the forum Mod approve of such alterations where the issue is fact over personality?
Can't anyone make theLioness stop deliberately misquoting people just to make debate points?
How can anyone expect to learn science facts in this forum with such behavior going on.
A serious impediment to surfers taking what's said on ES as factual or serious.
quote:
Use of the term “Neolithic” in Africa: two schools of thought
For Europe and the Near East, the term “Neolithic” designates sedentary societies whose economy is based on a system of production of food-producing goods. Apart from a few rare exceptions, the Neolithic is characterized here by the adoption, in varying order, of animal domestication, agriculture, ceramic production and sedentation. At some point later on, this process ended, for cereal-growing societies, with urbanization.
In Africa, by contrast, the process of “Neolithization” is unclear. Its acceptance by researchers varies according to region or even human groups, and the uneven quality of research does not aid in understanding. So, we observe that the same site may be considered, depending on the author, to be Neolithic, Proto-Neolithic, Meso-Neolithic, Epipalaeolithic or Final Palaeolithic! This lack of terminological coherence makes overall understanding of the processes difficult.
Considering all the data, two opposing currents of thought exist: one gives priority to the material culture, the other to a range of economic activities. In the first view, material assemblages prior to the advent of metallurgy are determined to be Neolithic or not on the basis of the presence of absence of pottery. This approach has the merit of being practical, but in its brutal simplicity, does not take into account the economic distinctiveness of diverse societies.
Bozo fishing camp in the Inland Niger Delta. Photo E. Huysecom.
Bozo fishing camp in the Inland Niger Delta. Photo E. Huysecom
In the second view, the term Neolithic is employed only to designate cultures prior to the age of metals for which archaeologists can demonstrate the existence of a true production economy. This approach thus concurs with the model for the Near East and Europe, which, in comparison with the approach based on the presence of pottery, is more satisfying since the economic characteristics of the societies are taken into account. However, this approach most often excludes the Neolithic from Africa, because in practice, the organic remains of the different production systems are so poorly preserved in the Sub-Saharan tropical acidic iron-rich soils that it is impossible to find evidence for the practice of animal husbandry or agriculture. We can, certainly, return to other evidence, such as rock art to identify animal husbandry, or low stone walls to infer the use of farming perimeters, but their dating is often difficult and their interpretation ambiguous. The presence of silos and grinding materials could as easily be associated with the management of wild grains as with domesticated cereals.