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Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations
Frigi et al.
Human Biology (August 2010 (82:4)
Abstract
Our objective is to highlight the age of sub-Saharan gene flows in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia. Therefore we analyzed in a broad phylogeographic context sub-Saharan mtDNA haplogroups of Tunisian Berber populations considered representative of ancient settlement. More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 years BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. 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.
Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations
Frigi et al.
Human Biology
August 2010 (82:4)
Discussion In this study we attempted to better elucidate the ancient African genetic background in the northwest African area, particularly in Tunisia. To this aim, we focused our study on Berber populations that are considered representative of the ancient North African populations that probably derived from Neolithic Capsians. During historic times, Berbers experienced a long and complicated history with many invasions, conquests, and migrations by Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Bedouins, Spanish, Turks, Andalusians, sub-Saharans (communities settled in Jerba and Gabes in the 16th–19th centuries), and French (Brett and Fentress 1996). During these invasions, Berbers were forced back to the mountains and to certain villages in southern Tunisia (Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004). At present, they are restricted to some isolates in the south who maintain the Berber language and to some populations in the north who lack an origin language. Many genetic studies on Tunisian Berber populations demonstrate the heterogeneity of Berbers with respect to European and sub-Saharan African contributions and the mosaic structure of Tunisian Berber populations with an absence of ethnic, linguistic, and geographic effects (Cherni et al. 2010).
In the present work, mtDNA data show a diversified distribution of African haplogroups. However, a question remains concerning the date of the sub-Saharan African inputs. Our results demonstrate an ancient local evolution in Tunisia of some African haplogroups (L2a, L3*, and L3b). The most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced from eastern sub-Saharan populations to North Africa about 20,000 years ago. The Siwa oasis sample studied by Coudray et al. (2009) contains sub-Saharan haplogroups L0a1, L3i, L4*, and L4b2, which are different from our Tunisian samples, in agreement with the heterogeneity of Berbers already shown in Tunisia.
Stevanovitch et al. (2004) suggested that the Gurna population in Egypt has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population characterized by a high haplogroup M1 frequency. This haplogroup is also present in three Berber populations (Kesra, Matmata, and Sned) with variable frequencies. In each of these populations, haplogroup L3* is also present. The association of both eastern African haplogroups in the Berber populations is a strong argument in favor of eastern African gene flow in Berbers. Other genetic and archaeological studies confirmed the crucial idea that an ancient population in East Africa constituted the basis of the ancestors of all African Upper Paleolithic populations—and their subsequent present-day descendants (Bengtson 2008; Keita 2004; Relethford 2000; Zakrzewski 2003, 2007).
Moreover, Berber languages spoken exclusively by North African populations belong to the Afro-Asiatic language. Diakonoff (1998) showed an exclusively African origin (Diakonoff, 1981, 1988) for the family. He explicitly described proto-Afro-Asiatic vocabulary as consistent with non-food-producing vocabulary and linked it to pre-Neolithic cultures in the Levant and in Africa south of Egypt. Moreover, Ehret. (2003) suggested that early Afro-Asiatic languages were spread by Mesolithic foragers from Africa into the Levant. On the contrary, Diamond and Bellwood (2003) suggested that food production and the Afro-Asiatic language family were brought simultaneously from the Near East to Africa by demic diffusion—in other words, by a migration of food-producing peoples. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom (1993) does not support this latter suggestion, however, and indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially incorporated Near Eastern domesticates into an existing indigenous foraging strategy and only over time developed a dependence on horticulture.
In conclusion, the crucial linguistic finding is that the three deepest clades of the Afro-Asiatic family are localized in Eritrea and Ethiopia. All the other languages of the family outside that region belong to subclades of just one of those deep clades. This kind of cladistic distribution is a basic criterion of the genetic argument for the genetic lineage origins well understood by geneticists. It applies to linguistic history as well.
Our results also point to a less ancient western African gene flow to Tunisia involving haplogroups L2a and L3b. Thus the sub-Saharan contribution to northern Africa starting from the east would have taken place before the Neolithic. The western African contribution to North Africa should have occurred before the Sahara’s formation (15,000 years BP). It seems likely that an expansion would have taken place in the Sahel zone starting about the time of a gradual climatic return to wetter conditions, when the Senegal River cut through the dunes (Burke et al. 1971). For subhaplogroup L2a1 (data not shown) we found some haplotypes that the Tunisian Berbers shared with Mauritanians and western sub-Saharan populations speaking a Niger-Congo language (studied by Salas et al. 2002).
This suggests that the people who brought these markers to the Berber populations most likely came from West African populations that spoke languages belonging to the Niger-Congo family when the Sahara became drier. However, this contribution of West African haplotypes and of other haplotypes, such as those belonging to haplogroup L1b1, could have been introduced to North Africa more recently.
Indeed, this West African contribution was difficult to date, because few haplotypes belonging to western African haplogroups have been observed, most of them being divergent. This result can be interpreted in different ways. Ancient western African mtDNA contributions could have disappeared from North Africa as a result of recent flows, or the situation observed now could be the result of a strong drift effect on ancient western African lineages, particularly those belonging to haplogroups L2a and L3b. A strong Iberian gene flow may have contributed to the decrease in African haplogroups. Indeed, most of the older hypotheses about North African population settlement used to suppose an Iberian or an eastern origin. The dates for subhaplogroups H1 and H3 (13,000 and 10,000 years, respectively) in Iberian and North African populations allow for this possibility. Kefi et al.’s (2005) data on ancient DNA could be viewed as being in agreement with such a presence in North Africa in ancient times (about 15,000–6,000 years ago) and with the fact that the North African populations are considered by most scholars as having their closest relations with European and Asian populations (Cherni et al. 2008; Ennafaa et al. 2009; Kefi et al. 2005; Rando et al. 1998).
However, considering the general understanding nowadays that human settlement of the rest of the world emerged from eastern northern Africa less than 50,000 years ago, a better explanation of these haplogroups might be that their frequencies reflect the original modern human population of these parts of Africa as much as or more than intrusions from outside the continent. The ways that gene frequencies may increase or decrease based on adaptive selection, gene flow, and/or social processes is under study and would benefit from the results of studies on autosomal and Y-chromosome markers.
Since the end of the extreme Saharan desiccation, lasting from before 25,000 years ago up to about 15,000 years ago, the Sahara has had post- and pre- Holocene cyclical climatic changes (Street and Grove 1976), and corresponding increases and decreases in population are probable. Wetter phases with better habitats perhaps allowed for increased colonization and gene and cultural exchange. Desiccation would have encouraged the emigration and segmentation of populations, with resultant genetic consequences secondary to drift producing more variation. During the last glacial period, the Sahara was even bigger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries (Ehret 2002). About 13,000 years ago, large parts of the Sahara were as dry as the desert is now (White and Mattingly 2006). The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara, especially from about 8500 to 6000 BC (Fezzan Project 2006). By around 3400 BC, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the gradual desertification of the region (Kröpelin 2008). Thus the Sahara, through its cyclical environmental changes, might be seen as a microevolutionary “processor” and/or “pump” of African people that “ejected” groups to the circum-Saharan regions in times of increasing aridity.
Indeed, it must be noted that the high frequencies of cDe, P, and V antigens and low frequencies of FY antigens in some Berber-speaking groups (Chamla 1980; Mourant et al. 1976) indicate affinities with tropical Africans. These data may indicate recent or ancient gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, a common immediate pre-Holocene ancestral group, or chance resemblance.
Our findings are in accordance with other studies on Y-chromosome markers that have shown that the predominant Y-chromosome lineage in Berber communities is the subhaplogroup E1b1b1b (E-M81), which emerged in Africa, is specific to North African populations, and is almost absent in Europe, except in Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and Sicily. Molecular studies on the Y chromosome in North Africa are interpreted as indicating that the southern part of Africa, namely, the Horn/East Africa, was a major source of population in the Nile Valley and northwest Africa after the Last Glacial Maximum, with some migration into the Near East and southern Europe (Bosch et al. 2001; Underhill et al. 2001). Hence, contrary to the suggestion that mtDNA haplogroups were introduced mostly from Iberia, it seems that Y-chromosome markers have an eastern African origin with an ancient local evolution in North Africa. These observations are in agreement with the proposal that the ancient communities ancestral in language to more recent Berber communities absorbed a lot of females from the existing pre-Holocene populations. This would indicate that the North African populations arose from admixture rather than from local evolution, leading to an intermediate genetic structure between eastern sub-Saharan Africans and Eurasians. Rock paintings in North Africa that show people of different phenotypes living together are a strong argument for our hypothesis (Hachid 1982, 1992, 1998).
In conclusion, our findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present study suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. 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.
Biocultural Emergence of the Amazigh in Africa: Comment on Frigi et al. (2010) S. O. Y. Keita. Human Biology (August 2010) (82:4)
Frigi et al. [2010 (this issue)] present some new findings on a population of Amazigh—Berber speakers in Tunisia. Although their study is not exhaustive, they provide an outline of human population history in the Maghreb and a general discussion of its mtDNA diversity. Their work is important in inviting researchers to think about the concepts of continuity and change in biology, culture, language, and identity in a geographic space. Their presentation helps in understanding the complexity of examining the ancestry and emergence of Berber origins in Africa as a local process and encourages the consideration of many questions about how the human biology and culture of a known population or ethnolinguistic group can be conceptualized through space and time.
Berber- (Tamazight-) speaking communities are thought to represent the clearest known descendants of the ancient indigenous populations of Africa west of the northern Nile valley in the supra-Saharan and northern Saharan regions (Brett and Fentress 1996; Camps 1982; Desanges 1981). “Indigenous” here can refer only to those whom we can perceive as having had the longest tenure on the land, using available historical evidence. However, there are questions. What constitutes “historical evidence” for earlier periods? Should it include archaeology, paleontology, historical linguistics, skeletal biology, and genetics, as broadly advocated by a historical anthropological approach (e.g., Kirch and Green 2001; Mace et al. 2005)? Or is it only to be based on the interpretation of texts from the ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, or Islamic periods [e.g., see comments by Brett and Fentress (1996), Desanges (1981), Norris 1982, and Snowden (1971)]?
How is the varied evidence to be ranked in importance, reconciled when it seems to be in contradiction, and analyzed synthetically? A simplistic positivism has to be avoided in discussions of any facet of human history because various pathways could lead to similar results. What is the role of evolutionary mechanisms—adaptive selection, gene flow, drift, sexual selection—in explaining the biology of some of the ancestors of Berber speakers at the deepest time levels and of living Amazigh as well? Frigi et al. (2010) do not address all these questions directly, but their work implicitly acknowledges their importance and provides a new framework for investigation.
Braudel’s (1980) concept of different levels of history can be adapted and adopted in a modified form as levels of biocultural or bioethnic history, to further consider Frigi and colleagues’ contribution, which implicitly acknowledges the contingent and multidimensional character of population interactions through time against an evolutionary background.
Another issue of some interest is the (mis)labeling of Berbers as “Eurasian” migrants from the Near East: Did they arrive as a unit from Asia or Europe, as a settler colonist “package” with a persistent identity analogous to Europeans in South Africa, or did the biology, language, and culture of the Amazigh emerge primarily from a set of interactions in Africa involving African peoples at base, that is, as a part of authentic African historical and biological processes? There are no ancient Berber communities outside Africa, and the idea of simple demic diffusion of Berbers as a people to the Maghreb (e.g., Arredi et al. 2004) from the Near East is not supported. It is of some interest that even Coon and Hunt (1965), using a raciotypological paradigm now long discredited, postulated a massive invasion of Africa by “Caucasians” in the Pleistocene and therefore thought that Berber language and identity had entered the Maghreb from more southerly regions in Africa. Frigi and colleagues suggest that several populations over time were involved in the biological ancestry of the current Berber speakers, and this is consistent with archaeological evidence of actual migration in the mid- to late Holocene (Camps 1982) as well as historical documentation. Craniofacial diversity has been documented in the region before Vandal and Arab migrations (Keita 1990).
It is important to remember that biology, language, and culture are not intrinsically or obligatorily correlated, a principle established some time ago (Boas 1940). It is not particularly surprising that one can sometimes find markers that will correlate across biology and culture at some levels—but the issue is how this came to be and when, and what it represents historically and socially. There is always the question of whether the correlation is an artifact of recent events or of “primordial” ontology. A language or language family can be adopted slowly or rapidly by nonnative speakers. The current biological profile of a region may predate (or postdate) the language spoken there. Communities may adopt (nonlinguistic) cultural practices from others without greatly changing language or biology; or they may become primarily integrated linguistically and politically but not biologically or exhibit other permutations of these variables, such as total biocultural assimilation. The biology of a particular ethnolinguistic group or community may change based on intermarriage if the social rules allow the offspring to become group members. Such matings may have occurred long before the recall of communal memory, whether in texts or oral tradition. Relatively nonethnocentric polygamous societies or populations may have cultural descendants who are genealogically heterogeneous when viewed over a millennium.
Frigi et al. (2010) suggest these possibilities as factors in their consideration of the asymmetric assimilation of females of non-African origin into Berber-speaking populations whose males currently have a predominance of lineages defined by the African M35/81 biallelic marker. It is interesting that these “non-African” mtDNA lineages are usually predominant while being diverse (Coudray et al. 2009; Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004; Khodjet-el-Khil et al. 2008). The existence of mtDNA lineages common to Saami and some Amazigh groups (Achilli et al.
2005) is likely to be explained by the migration of females bearing these lineages from a region in northern Europe (perhaps in the ranks of the Vandals or far more ancient back-migrations to Africa), whether they were ethnically Saami or not. However, there may have been other locales where these lineages once existed. Circular reasoning in syntheses involving multiple disciplines has to be avoided. The criteria and methods for a given discipline usually have to be given equal weight, and their results should be considered independently before an effort at synthesis is made. For example, a hypothesis about the place of origin of a language family or phylum must be based on linguistic evidence and methods, not on DNA or craniofacial patterns. Likewise the place of origin of a particular genetic variant or lineage has to be based on genetic data, principles, and models, not on archaeological data. The locale of origin of a particular culture or archaeological industry is subject to analyses based on methods and theory that are specific to the relevant disciplines.
The only exception to these “rules” is if a calculated date of origin of a genetic variant found in a given locale predates the existence of people in that place. Although the notion of population ties together both biology and culture broadly conceived, it cannot be claimed that continuity in one necessarily means continuity in another. If the question is about physical population migration, then the same conclusion reached from every discipline independently would seem to best support the claim (Rouse 1986). However, it cannot be said absolutely that there was no movement if all lines of evidence do not point in the same direction. The idea of Occam’s razor may sometimes mean accepting the reality of human complexity and an inability to reconcile evidence with preconceived models.
Frigi et al. (2010) have provided a general temporal framework for Maghreb population history, from the Paleolithic to French colonization. This is appropriate given the evidence for early modern human behavior and life history in the Maghreb (Bouzouggar et al. 2007; T. Smith et al. 2007), the diversity of various epi-Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures in or near the region associated with climatic changes (Lubell et al. 1984; Rahmani 2003, 2004; Sereno et al. 2008; Sheppard and Lubell 1990), and the interactions with known “peoples” at later dates (Bennett 1960; Brown 1968; Desanges 1981; Hirschberg 1960; Nebel 2002).
In reviewing data from multiple disciplines, Frigi and colleagues have given the region’s populations a multidimensional existence. In providing evidence for the ongoing microevolution in the Maghreb of ancient mtDNA lineages that emerged in Africa and evidence of later gene flow from multiple directions, they have revealed that this region has biological continuity with the deep past as well as change.
Frigi and colleagues may have inadvertently revealed peoples whose ancestors had a level of cultural flexibility in accepting outsiders as mates. As noted, the male and female histories of a population may be different in their sources (Wilkins 2006), although they are now seen as part of a recognizable biocultural entity with a categorically singular identity. How is the emergence of the Amazigh peoples in the geographic range of their homeland to be understood in terms of culture, language, and biology? In some sense the question is about origins, a term that can be confusing because of its various meanings. It can be applied to different aspects of a population—which can be disarticulated and can change as a function of time. Ancestry must not be confused with explanation, or gene history with population or culture history. Known ancestors and the “ancestors of one’s genes” are not the same things necessarily (Weiss and Long 2009).
Can a narrative of “origins” be constructed on the basis of an internal perspective of the dynamics of the human communities of northwestern Africa, considered through time? Or is this region simply an appendage of other places? Sometimes the Amazigh, by use of the term “Eurasian” in a categorical model of analysis, are placed in a raciotypological model without reference to evolution and their indigenous emergence in Africa. (It can be ventured that this is largely based on nonevolutionary ideas about phenotype, notions of bounded unchanging populations, problematic assumptions about language families, and certain old attitudes and theories about Africa.)
Frigi and colleagues have documented the deep-time biological connections of current Berber speakers to Africa. The migration of “Europeans” and “Asians” is also discussed. There has been continuity and change in the population from original settlement. It is important to remember that high levels of gene flow and biocultural assimilation could lead to great biological heterogeneity in a population whose language family or culture does not change. Frigi and colleagues address the idea of the indigenous, although not explicitly, and lay the groundwork for more nuanced future discussions. They suggest a complex biogeographic history not reducible to raciotypological constructs or outdated simplistic theories of colonization and migration. They provide a basis for a rich discussion by acknowledging the interactions of known peoples in the Maghreb and unknown actors of a deeper past. The issue of what is indigenous is seen to be one of definition, turning on what aspect of a population or region is ranked as its “defining” characteristic, and whether this may change or could have changed over time. The term indigenous unfortunately is connected to a discourse about the West and non-West and sometimes has a negative sensibility and hence may not be the best word, but a discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this presentation. Of course “indigenous” is a relative term when the temporal scope of human evolution and history is considered, and it even seems to depend to a degree on what part of the world is under discussion. Europe can serve as a good example. If it is asked who are the “indigenous” Europeans, there would probably be a request to clarify the time depth, given that modern humans are not native to Europe and arrived there from elsewhere.
(The next question therefore is at what point do they become “European” and what precisely does this mean: current limb proportions, skin color, genetic variation, language, the presence of Neanderthal DNA?) Does “indigenousness” require residency back to the upper Paleolithic, the Neolithic, and so on? Is it only a biological phenomenon requiring a “drop” of Neanderthal blood or a linguistic phenomenon requiring the speaking of Indo-European languages? Or if the question is who were the indigenous inhabitants of northern, southern, western, eastern, or central Europe, the answers would necessarily take on a different tone, based on other information.
Are the Basque speakers the indigenous inhabitants of Europe, if currently spoken language phyla and families are used as “population markers,” a problematic assumption? Basque predates Indo-European, and there is some indication of some level of biological distinctiveness (Alonso et al. 2005). The fact that historical linguists (e.g., Ehret 2002; Nichols 1997) can reconstruct the existence of culture-linguistic units for a proto-language family (e.g., Adamawa) or phylum (e.g., Niger-Congo), which may have migrated, does not mean that they are suggesting that the people making up such entities connote genetic units or Mendelian breeding populations. It also does not mean that the speakers of such proto-entities had a common molecular or social genealogical origin at foundation, or that the linguists are suggesting this.
Defining “origins” or “indigenous” becomes one of perspective. How much “Basque ancestry” would a European population have to have for the label of “indigenous European” to apply? If none, why not? (What is the relationship between cultural and biological genealogy?) Can it be assumed that the Basques of today biologically represent those of the past “accurately”? The post-Paleolithic European assimilation of males from Africa and Asia bearing younger genetic variants is documented (Cruciani et al. 2004, 2007): Are such ancient admixed populations to be viewed as “less” European or non-European? Are Nordics or the Basques the “standard” European? Is language, biology, culture, geography, or something else the arbiter of European-ness? In practice, this question seems to be little asked in studies of Europeans: All these groups and nationalities are considered European with little question. Aegean peoples are not presented as “hybrids.” The linguistic and genetic diversity is not a factor in the designation of “indigenous” for Europe.
But in the case of Africa there seems to be a problem with diversity for some scholars. The Indo-European language phylum, in the standard evidence-based interpretation, did not originate in the European heartland (Ehret, personal communication, 2010). Most people in Europe today speak Indo-European languages—now considered as “indigenous” as Basque. What does it mean for the concept of European if Europe’s major language phylum did not originate in what is considered Europe proper? How much of the spread of early Indo-European was due to outright settler colonization and how much to language shift—these are questions that will likely be debated for some time. Are the Finns, Saami, and Hungarians (or their “original” ancestors)—all non-Indo- European-speaking—to be considered Europeans? Apparently so. Contrast this with ideas held by some about Berbers as “Eurasians” who speak a language family that belongs to a phylum whose proto-parent emerged in Africa using standard historical linguistic criteria and whose major history and differentiation occurred in Africa (Ehret 2002; Greenberg 1963; Nichols 1997). In discussions about Europe, geography seems to be enough to define what is “indigenous”— with the exception of the Turks. This contrast deserves review by students of the sociology of knowledge.
The European example is relevant to the discussion of Berbers because of the use of terms by some researchers that imply that Berbers are not an African development, an African people, in their beginning and current state. Calling the Amazigh “Eurasian” based primarily on skin color without a discussion of process in history, language, evolution, and Y-chromosome variants can easily be seen as problematic when literature about Europe is examined carefully. The possibility of asymmetric gene flow with more Eurasian females being assimilated into the ancient Maghreb—and their lineages simply differentially surviving in greater frequencies—is addressed in a preliminary fashion by Frigi et al. (2010) and further engages us in the history of social interactions that may influence population biology.
Returning to the Amazigh, the findings and comments of Frigi et al. (2010) on Tunisian Berbers, and Berbers in general, suggest a new way of looking at the Maghreb region of Africa. Their review and analysis offer the opportunity to begin to develop a new and nuanced narrative about the peopling of the region, one that avoids the biases of past writings. Their findings of ongoing evolution in the Maghreb of ancient mtDNA lineages that originated in Africa, synthesized with the evidence of the assimilation of migrants (mainly female?) from Europe and the Near East, the predominance of uniquely African Y-chromosome lineages, and the observation that Berber is the only extant indigenous language in the region suggest the workings of both biological and cultural processes. There are clearly different levels of biological and cultural history. Except in situations of migrationist settler colonialism associated with the annihilation or conquest of local peoples, groups emerge from local elements and new additions—all influenced by the social and physical environments. This view of populations as assemblages and processes is different from a notion of them as essentialist primordial entities with fixed traits having continuity over time. In any geographic space groups can interact at various levels with various strictures; languages can be adopted partly or fully, and social rules may allow the acceptance of offspring by foreign females but not males, or vice versa. It is possible for a group to view itself as genealogically homogeneous by memory but to evince a genetic heterogeneity of lineages obtained in the remote past. “Admixture” in the late Pleistocene in the deep background of a regional population is to be differentiated from gene flow between known historical entities.
Frigi and colleagues’ suggestion that supra-Saharan Africans are an indigenous development with a complex story is a corrective to past models. The settlement of the coastal Maghreb in the Middle and Late Stone Age is a part of the settlement of the world outside Saharo-tropical Africa. The early modern human presence in the Maghreb suggests that that region played a role in modern human developments (Bouzouggar et al. 2007). Even if whole communities later came from outside Africa into the Maghreb (before the Phoenicians), which is not knowable, they became thoroughly assimilated into the autochthonous population— which adopted some of its culture (Camps 1982), and their descendants are a part of the emergence of the much later Amazigh world. Less arid climatic conditions in the early to mid-Holocene Sahara allowed for the interaction of various peoples who no doubt contributed to the population history, as observed by Frigi et al. (2010). Saharan developments likely help to explain the Berber emergence, because, based on recent work [see Kuper and Kropelin (2006) and Sereno et al. (2008)], the desert was likely the site of a metapopulation and cultural differentiation. Whether the early Saharan rock paintings depict only Africans of varying phenotypes or such Africans and Asians (as suggested by Frigi and colleagues) can be debated, but the net result was assimilation into Amazigh communities, because there are no Berbers in Europe or Asia. The light skin color of Mediterranean Africa may be the result of adaptive evolution or drift, given the length of time of modern people in Africa, including the Maghreb, or gene flow, but more likely some combination.
The Maghreb has several Neolithic traditions (Camps 1982; Phillipson 2005), which might indicate different peoples or simply cultural adoption or adaptation by heterogeneous populations who became unified under singular cultural practices and one language family. The Neolithic Capsian tradition shows continuity with previous cultures, with evidence of these accepting domesticated sheep and goat into a local subsistence pattern, thus becoming Neolithicized with a pastoralist economy (Rahmani, 2003, 2004; Sheppard and Lubell 1990). A. B. Smith (2005) and McDonald (1998) indicate the importance of pastoralism in the Holocene Sahara, and this economy may help in the understanding of Berber emergence. In the coastal Maghreb various Neolithic and post-Neolithic interregional interactions are in evidence, based on archaeology and the eventual settlements of the Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, and others (Camps 1982).
In aggregate, over time, these peoples, along with the later importation of Europeans (Bennett 1960; Davis 2004), would seemingly have contributed far more to the current biological picture than has been realized. The much later trans-Saharan trade in enslaved individuals no doubt played a role in genetic contributions, but the egress from a desiccating Sahara with subsequent population formations would explain some of the younger “sub-Saharan” variation, be it from western or eastern Africa. The “Eurasian” component seems to have come in over a longer period of time, as noted earlier. A small amount of gene flow per generation into a population or geographic region can drastically change its original gene frequencies in only a few thousand years, as noted by Cavalli-Sforza (1991).
The development of a narrative of the population history of the Maghreb requires careful analysis using several approaches. Frigi and colleagues have made an important contribution to studies of African human biology and culture in suggesting the complexity of Maghreban population history.
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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somebody could go into the above text, quote select passages and make whatever case they wanted
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Our results also point to a less ancient western African gene flow to Tunisia involving haplogroups L2a and L3b. Thus the sub-Saharan contribution to northern Africa starting from the east would have taken place before the Neolithic. The western African contribution to North Africa should have occurred before the Sahara’s formation (15,000 years BP). It seems likely that an expansion would have taken place in the Sahel zone starting about the time of a gradual climatic return to wetter conditions, when the Senegal River cut through the dunes (Burke et al. 1971). For subhaplogroup L2a1 (data not shown) we found some haplotypes that the Tunisian Berbers shared with Mauritanians and western sub-Saharan populations speaking a Niger-Congo language (studied by Salas et al. 2002).
This passage, amongst other matters highlighted elsewhere, discredits Kefi et al.'s [speak of the devil -- as the article makes a note of their work] fairly shaky postulation that little "sub-Saharan" markers penetrated the Sahara and onto the coastal northern areas.
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posted
I wonder how long it'll take this study to reach the masses? Will it's importance ever be taken into account or will people continue to equate Berber-speakers with Europeans and Arabs?
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: I wonder how long it'll take this study to reach the masses? Will it's importance ever be taken into account or will people continue to equate Berber-speakers with Europeans and Arabs?
They will continue to equate Berbers with Europeans and Arabs--because people will not admit that a large number of European women were made slaves and that's why we see "European" genes among this population.
Moreover this does nothing to refute the evidence of the numerous Europeans settled in this area begining with the People of the Sea and ending with the Vandals (and Ottoman Turks who sold many European women slaves in North Africa )that led to masss migrations of Europeans into North Africa which has contributed to the large number of "white" Berbers.
quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: I wonder how long it'll take this study to reach the masses? Will it's importance ever be taken into account or will people continue to equate Berber-speakers with Europeans and Arabs?
They will continue to equate Berbers with Europeans and Arabs--because people will not admit that a large number of European women were made slaves and that's why we see "European" genes among this population.
Moreover this does nothing to refute the evidence of the numerous Europeans settled in this area begining with the People of the Sea and ending with the Vandals (and Ottoman Turks who sold many European women slaves in North Africa )that led to masss migrations of Europeans into North Africa which has contributed to the large number of "white" Berbers.
. .
Keita says:
"The light skin color of Mediterranean Africa may be the result of adaptive evolution or drift, given the length of time of modern people in Africa, including the Maghreb, or gene flow, but more likely some combination."
you are referring to a different thing migration of Asians into Africa, beginning with the Sea people, beginning approximately 4,000 years ago.
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: I wonder how long it'll take this study to reach the masses? Will it's importance ever be taken into account or will people continue to equate Berber-speakers with Europeans and Arabs?
They will continue to equate Berbers with Europeans and Arabs--because people will not admit that a large number of European women were made slaves and that's why we see "European" genes among this population.
Moreover this does nothing to refute the evidence of the numerous Europeans settled in this area begining with the People of the Sea and ending with the Vandals (and Ottoman Turks who sold many European women slaves in North Africa )that led to masss migrations of Europeans into North Africa which has contributed to the large number of "white" Berbers.
. .
Keita says:
"The light skin color of Mediterranean Africa may be the result of adaptive evolution or drift, given the length of time of modern people in Africa, including the Maghreb, or gene flow, but more likely some combination."
you are referring to a different thing migration of Asians into Africa, beginning with the Sea people, beginning approximately 4,000 years ago.
Correct. Keita is stating an opinion. Without ancient DNA everything said about early NA genetics is conjecture.
If there is historical evidence of a population migrating into an area--you can not put a spend on the evidence and deny the possibility that the present sociological conditions in a region are the result of ancient habitation--instead of historical phenomena.
posted
Who can get access to the full text study? I can't even purchase the study, is there anyone that can access it?
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Mitochondrial Haplogroup H1 in North Africa: An Early Holocene Arrival from Iberia (2010)
Claudio Ottoni1,2,3,4#, Giuseppina Primativo1#, Baharak Hooshiar Kashani5, Alessandro Achilli5,6, Cristina Martínez-Labarga1, Gianfranco Biondi7, Antonio Torroni5, Olga Rickards1*
1 Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy, 2 Laboratory of Forensic Genetics and Molecular Archaeology, Universitaire Ziekenhuizen, Leuven, Belgium, 3 Center for Archaeological Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 4 Center for Human Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 5 Dipartimento di Genetica e Microbiologia, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy, 6 Dipartimento di Biologia Cellulare e Ambientale, Università di Perugia, Perugia, Italy, 7 Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Università dell'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
The Tuareg of the Fezzan region (Libya) are characterized by an extremely high frequency (61%) of haplogroup H1, a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup that is common in all Western European populations. To define how and when H1 spread from Europe to North Africa up to the Central Sahara, in Fezzan, we investigated the complete mitochondrial genomes of eleven Libyan Tuareg belonging to H1. Coalescence time estimates suggest an arrival of the European H1 mtDNAs at about 8,000–9,000 years ago, while phylogenetic analyses reveal three novel H1 branches, termed H1v, H1w and H1x, which appear to be specific for North African populations, but whose frequencies can be extremely different even in relatively close Tuareg villages. Overall, these findings support the scenario of an arrival of haplogroup H1 in North Africa from Iberia at the beginning of the Holocene, as a consequence of the improvement in climate conditions after the Younger Dryas cold snap, followed by in situ formation of local H1 sub-haplogroups. This process of autochthonous differentiation continues in the Libyan Tuareg who, probably due to isolation and recent founder events, are characterized by village-specific maternal mtDNA lineages.
Introduction Top
In the last few years the story of human migrations has been extensively reconstructed thanks to the contribution of archaeology and genetics, particularly the latter through the study of the two uniparentally transmitted genetic systems: mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome. The study of maternal genealogies appears to indicate that the peopling of the Eurasian continent by modern humans likely began around 60–70 thousand years ago (kya) through the ‘southern coastal route’ from the Horn of Africa via Arabia and South Asia, up to Australasia [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. However, alternative exit scenarios, including a more northern route into the Levant and multiple waves of migration (see Kayser 2010 [6] and Majumder 2010 [7] for a review), have recently regained some momentum after the postulated detection of some Neanderthal nuclear DNA variation in the genomes of modern Eurasians [8]. The ‘southern coastal route’ scenario instead implies that, blocked by deserts, humans could not move from the Arabian Gulf area into the Levant earlier than 50 kya, when climate conditions improved [9]. Entrance into the Levant paved the way to the dispersal of modern humans both north-westward into Europe and south-westward into Northern Africa [10], [11]. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), approximately between 26.5 and 19 kya [12] ice sheets largely covered large portions of North America and Europe. In warmer regions of the world, the climate was cooler and drier and deserts spread over large regions, particularly in Northern Africa, Middle East and Central Asia [13], [14]. Accordingly, during the LGM, humans concentrated in refugial areas of southwestern Europe, in the Balkans and Levant, and on the east European plains [9], [15], [16]. The subsequent Bølling warming, around 15 kya, triggered re-expansion processes which led to the resettlement of Central and Northern Europe. Genetic signatures of these expansions are evident in mtDNA genealogies, for instance haplogroups H1, H3 and V contributed to the gradual re-peopling of Europe from the Franco-Cantabrian refuge in the postglacial [17], [18]. Similarly, though to a lesser extent, H5*(xH5a), H20 and H21 may be associated to a postglacial population expansion phase in the Caucasus area [19]. Although restricted to the Mediterranean coast, an expansion took place also from the Italian peninsula northward, as attested to by the haplogroup U5b3 [20].
Evidence of trans-Mediterranean contacts between Northern Africa and Western Europe has been assessed at the level of different genetic markers (e.g. [21], [22], [23], [24]). With regards to the mtDNA, the high incidence of H1 and H3 in Northwest Africa, together with some other West European lineages (i.e. V and U5b), reveals a possible link with the postglacial expansion from the Iberian Peninsula, which not only directed north-eastward into the European continent [17], [18], [25], but also southward, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, into North Africa [26], [27]. So, besides the ‘autochthonous’ South-Saharan component, the maternal pool of Northern Africa appears to be characterized by at least two other major components: (i) a Levantine contribution (i.e. haplogroups U6 and M1, [11]), associated with the return to Africa around 45 kya, and (ii) a more recent West European input associated with the postglacial expansion.
Within the West-European component in North Africa, H1 is the most represented haplogroup with frequencies ranging from 21% in some Tunisian Berber groups to 1% in Egypt [28]. Recently, an extremely high incidence of H1 (61%) has been reported in a Tuareg population from the Central Sahara, in Libya [29]. Tuareg are a semi-nomadic pastoralist people of Northwest Africa, who speak a Berber language. MtDNA analyses performed on the Libyan Tuareg have highlighted their genetic relatedness with some Berber groups and other North African populations, mainly resulting from the sharing of a common West-Eurasian component. A high degree of homogeneity in the Libyan H1 lineages was observed, suggesting that the high frequency of H1 in the Tuareg may be the result of genetic drift and recent founder events.
To better define the nature and extent of H1 variation in the Tuareg from Libya we have now determined the complete sequence of eleven of their mtDNAs belonging to H1. The comparison of these H1 sequences with those already available from Europe and North Africa provides new clues on how and when H1 spread in Northern Africa up to the Central Sahara. Methods Top
Earlier mtDNA molecular analyses carried out on the two hypervariable segments (HVS-I and HVS-II) and diagnostic markers in the mtDNA coding region in a sample of 129 Libyan Tuareg from two neighboring villages in Fezzan (Al Awaynat and Tahala) allowed the detection of 79 H1 mtDNAs encompassing 61% of the population sample [29]. Appropriate written informed consent to anonymously use their data was obtained from all individuals. The ethics approval for this study was provided by the Ethical committee of the University of Rome Tor Vergata (DM 12 maggio 2006, Delibera n. 243/2007). The genetic diversity of the Libyan H1 mtDNAs appeared to be extremely low, with 91% of the H1 individuals sharing the same HVS-I/II haplotype (i.e. CRS-263). In the present work, a more detailed molecular characterization of the H1 haplotypes was performed. In particular, eight mtDNAs characterized by the CRS-263 haplotype and three mtDNAs harboring the haplotype 16037-16256-263 (for more detail see Ottoni et al. 2009 [29]) were chosen and submitted to complete sequencing. The sequencing procedure and the phylogeny construction of the complete mtDNAs were performed as described elsewhere [17], [30].
The rho statistic and its standard deviation sigma [31] were calculated for both the entire H1 haplogroup and its internal sub-clades. Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimates were also provided by using PAML 3.13 and considering three partitions on the entire mitochondrial molecule: HVS-I (positions 16051 to 16400), HVS-II (positions 68 to 263) and remainder. The age estimates were then converted to years according to the mutation rates of Soares et al. [32] and Loogväli et al. [33].
Moreover, once the phylogeny of the H1 Tuareg lineages was reconstructed and its internal clades defined, 50 of the 64 remaining Tuareg H1 mtDNAs harboring the CRS-263 haplotype were surveyed for the diagnostic mutations of the novel branches, thus allowing their sub-classification. The remaining 14 mtDNAs were not screened for sub-clade markers due to lack of DNA.
In detail, PCR amplification and sequencing of four fragments was carried out in order to investigate the status at nucleotide positions (nps) 4313 (L4180-AACTTCCTACCACTCACC, H4621-TGGCAGCTTCTGTGGAAC), 9148 (L9003-CCTAACCGCTAACATTAC, H9280-CTAGGCCGGAGGTCATTA), 14560 (L14398-AACACTCACCAAGACCTCAACC, H14832-AGTGAGCCGAAGTTTCATCATG) and 8966 (L8908-TTCTTACCACAAGGCACACC, H9014-TAGGTGGCCTGCAGTAATGT), which respectively mark H1v1, H1v1a, H1v1b and H1w.
The geographic representation of H1 haplogroup frequencies was obtained using Surfer 6 (http://www.goldensoftware.com) with the Kriging procedure. Frequency estimates at each grid node were inferred by considering the entire data set. The extent of H1 variation in North Africa was evaluated from available HVS-I data (nps 16024–16365) with the software Arlequin version 3.1 [34]. Results Top
The most parsimonious tree encompassing eleven complete H1 mtDNAs from the Tuareg together with four previously published sequences from Tunisia [35], one Berber from Egypt [17] and two Jewish Moroccans [36] is illustrated in Figure 1. All Tuareg sequences clustered into three clades that had not been previously reported and thus were termed H1v, H1w and H1x. Five sequences grouped into the sub-clade H1v1 defined by the transition at np 4313. One Tunisian sequence (# 8) did not cluster into H1v1 but was closely related, since it harbored the mutation at 10314 that defines the clade H1v (Figure 1). The sub-clade H1v1 splits into two branches defined by the transitions at np 9148 (clade H1v1a) and 14560 (clade H1v1b). Three Tuareg mtDNAs formed the novel clade H1w that is defined by the transition at np 8966, while the last three Tuareg mtDNAs, apart from the HVS-I transitions at 16037 and 16256, were found to harbor mutations at nps 7765 and 10410 in the coding region (clade H1x). The Tuareg complete mtDNAs have been deposited in GenBank, under the accession numbers reported in Table S1. thumbnail
Figure 1. Most parsimonious tree of complete H1 mtDNA sequences from North Africa.
The tree includes 18 complete mtDNA sequences and illustrates sub-haplogroup affiliations, including the novel sub-haplogroups H1v, H1w and H1x. Eleven sequences are from the Tuareg of Libya and seven were previously published: four Tunisians, two Moroccan Jews, and one Berber from Egypt (Table S1 and the supplementary References S1). The position of the revised Cambridge reference sequence (rCRS) [47] is indicated for reading off sequence motifs. Tuareg mtDNAs were selected through a preliminary sequence analysis of the control region and an RFLP survey in order to include the widest possible range of internal variation of haplogroup H1. The sequencing procedure and phylogeny construction were performed as described elsewhere [17], [30]. Mutations are shown on the branches; they are transitions unless a base is explicitly indicated. The prefix @ designates reversions, while suffixes indicate: transversions (to A, G, C, or T), indels (+, d), gene locus (~t, tRNA; ~r, rRNA; ~nc, non coding region outside of the mtDNA control region), and synonymous or non-synonymous changes (s or ns). Recurrent mutations are underlined. The root of H1o has been defined according to Behar et al. [36]. Additional information regarding each mtDNA is available on Table S1 and on the supplementary References S1. MtDNAs # 1 and 2 are from Moroccan Jews [36], # 3–7 and 9–14 are from Libyan Tuareg, # 8 and 15–17 are from Tunisian subjects [35], and # 18 is from a Berber of Egypt [17]. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013378.g001
Divergence values (rho statistics and ML estimates) and the age in years of the most recent common ancestor of the main clusters are reported in Table 1, according to the evolutionary rate estimates described in Soares et al. [32] and Loogväli et al. [33]. The two evolutionary rates provide a coalescence time of about 8–9 kya for the whole H1 haplogroup in North Africa. As expected, the North African-specific clades are characterized by younger ages ranging from about 3.8 to 6.7 kya for H1v, and from 2.1 to 7.9 kya for H1v1. The youngest clades were found to be H1w and H1x, with an age of about 0.8–1.1 kya. thumbnail
Table 1. Age estimates of relevant nodes in the North African H1 phylogeny illustrated in Figure 1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013378.t001
The survey of diagnostic markers 4313, 8966, 9148 and 14560 in 50 individuals characterized by the CRS-263 haplotype showed that all of these clustered within the two novel sub-clades H1v1 and H1w identified by initial sequencing of the eight entire mtDNAs characterized by the CRS-263 control-region motif. Overall the 64 Libyan Tuareg mtDNAs belonging to H1 (Table S2) were mostly distributed between the clades H1v1 (38%) and H1w (53%), with a minor component (9%) belonging instead to clade H1x. Within H1v1, half of the Libyan Tuareg (i.e. 12 individuals, equal to 50%) were characterized by the transition at np 9148 (sub-clade H1v1a) and half by the transition at np 14560 (sub-clade H1v1b). It is worth noting the extensive village-specificity of the sub-clades. Indeed H1v1b and H1w harbored frequencies of 22% and 63% in Al Awaynat, but were not found at all in Tahala, and 80% of the mtDNAs from the village of Tahala were members of H1v1a in contrast to the only four out of 54 (7%) from the village of Al Awaynat. Similar to H1v1a, haplogroup H1x was also shared between the two groups with two instances in Tahala and four in Al Awaynat.
An up-to-date map of the H1 spatial distribution in Africa and West Eurasia is illustrated in Figure 2. Frequency data and other details of the populations from the literature included in this survey are reported in Table S3 and in the supplementary References S1. There is an evident frequency peak in the Central Sahara associated with the Libyan Tuareg, who show the highest frequency value (61%) among all the populations considered in the analysis. Since the high frequency of H1 in the Libyan Tuareg is most likely the result of random genetic drift and founder events, we also investigated the H1 distribution removing the Libyan Tuareg sample and thus leaving only previously reported data (Figure 3). As expected, frequency peaks in the European continent were observed in the Iberian Peninsula, whereas in Northern Africa the rather high frequency values in Morocco and Tunisia became apparent. More southward, among the Tuareg from the Sahel region [37], a frequency peak is also observed. To further evaluate the extent of H1 variation in the Tuareg from Libya relative to that of Moroccans, Tunisians and Sahelian Tuareg samples, HVS-I data from the four groups were employed to calculate the diversity indices reported in Table 2. The sharp homogeneity of H1 in the Libyan Tuareg, who show extremely low values of haplotype diversity (0.165), is straightforward. Moroccans, Tunisians and the Tuareg from Sahel were found to be much more diverse than the Libyan Tuareg, with haplotype diversities of 0.577, 0.633 and 0.595, respectively. Similarly, the values of nucleotide diversity and average number of nucleotide differences observed in Morocco (0.309 and 1.056), Tunisia (0.316 and 1.081) and among the Tuareg from Sahel (0.234 and 0.800) are all much higher than those of the Libyan Tuareg (0.098 and 0.335). thumbnail
Figure 2. Spatial frequency distribution (%) of haplogroup H1 in western Eurasia and North Africa.
The inset illustrates the geographic location of populations surveyed. Populations and corresponding frequency values are listed in Table S3 and in the supplementary References S1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013378.g002 thumbnail
Figure 3. Spatial frequency distribution (%) of haplogroup H1 in western Eurasia and North Africa after excluding the Libyan Tuareg samples. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013378.g003 thumbnail
Table 2. Diversity of haplogroup H1 in North African populations. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013378.t002 Discussion Top
The H1 phylogeny based on complete North African sequences reveals a degree of branch diversification that is almost undetectable when using only control region data. Moreover, when compared to the H1 phylogeny built using complete sequences from Europe [17], [19], [38], [39], it appears that the novel branches H1v, H1w and H1x identified during the course of this study are all African-specific. This finding suggests that these H1 sub-clades most likely arose in North Africa after the arrival of the H1 European founder sequence, corresponding to the H1 node in Figure 1. The issue of the North African specificity of H1v, H1w and H1x needs to be corroborated by additional survey of H1 variation in Western Europe, especially in Iberia, but for the moment none of the European complete mtDNA sequences belonging to H1 were found to belong to these clades. This scenario is further supported by the overall age of haplogroup H1 in North Africa. Using the evolution rates recently proposed by Soares et al. [32] and Loogväli et al. [33], haplogroup H1 shows a coalescence time of approximately 8–9 ky (Table 1), in agreement with the hypothesis of an early arrival and radiation of H1 in the African continent in the first half of the Holocene, as a consequence of the postglacial expansion from the Iberian Peninsula. An arrival from Iberia explains the extent of H1 variation observed in North African populations (Table 2). Indeed, Moroccans and Tunisians, the populations geographically closest to Europe, harbor the highest diversity values for all considered indices. Thus, the coastal areas of northwestern Africa, after the arrival of the Iberian founder H1 mtDNAs, probably acted as centers for the subsequent diffusion of H1 in the internal regions of North Africa. The rather high frequency of H1 in the Tuareg from Sahel (23.3%), in association with intermediate diversity values, is in agreement with the proposal that drift played a major role in shaping the genetic structure of inland populations after they were entrapped in the Sahel belt by the desertification of the Sahara [37]. As for the Libyan Tuareg, the extremely low values of the diversity indices confirm that the outstanding high frequency of H1 in this population is the result of even more recent founder events.
The H1 phylogeny shows a link between the Tuareg of Libya and one Tunisian at the level of clade H1v (Figure 1). Therefore, the H1v coalescence time of about 4–7 ky (Table 1) might correspond to an ancestral split within a nomadic population of Northwest Africa, which led also to the formation of a derived Central Saharan population. The H1v1 sub-clade most likely arose in this population of Central Sahara, which, in turn, contributed extensively to the mtDNA pool of the modern villages of Tahala and Al Awaynat. However, the distribution of the H1v1 lineages in the two Tuareg villages, with H1v1b found only in Al Awaynat and 80% of H1v1a in Tahala and only 7% in Al Awaynat, indicates a rather sharp distinction and a village-specificity of the modern mtDNA gene pool. This is probably the result of peculiar long lasting cultural practices in the Tuareg, who define the affiliation to tribes by matrilineal descent [40], and points to a high degree of isolation between the two villages, at least at the maternal level, regardless of their geographic proximity.
The migratory dynamics which took place over the last 2 ky in the hyperarid Central Sahara, and which possibly led small Tuareg groups with different maternal ancestries to mix and separate from one another [29], [41], [42], could explain the presence of the other two clades, H1w and H1x (respectively 53% and 9% of the total H1 mtDNAs analyzed), in the Libyan Tuareg sample. It should be noted that historically this phase coincides with the decline of the Garamantes, whom the Tuareg consider as their ancestors according to oral traditions [43], [44], [45]. These people inhabited the Fezzan between 2.7 and 1.8 kya and established state-entities based on sedentary settlements and the trans-Saharan caravan trade system. It is plausible that the dismantling of the Garamantian society led small groups to separate as distinct tribes, or alternatively to blend into larger groups.
The French colonization, in the early 20th century, might have also determined the admixture of different Tuareg groups. Indeed, when the Tuareg were confined to restricted areas, there was a decline in their socio-political system and a forced mixture of previously separated tribal groups [46]. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that the three H1 clusters detected here in the Tuareg were all present in the same founder group cannot be totally ruled out, particularly since we are dealing with a small and isolated human group in which genetic drift might have significantly affected the make-up of the mitochondrial pool.
Overall, the results of this study support the hypothesis that most of the West Eurasian maternal contribution detectable in Northwest African populations is likely linked to prehistoric (i.e. the post-glacial expansion from the Iberian Peninsula) rather than more recent historic events [26], [27], [37]. Furthermore, the data presented confirm that the analysis of complete mtDNA sequences represents a valuable tool to reveal not only the spatial patterns beneath large-scale colonization events, but also those of smaller-scale dispersals which may have contributed to the origin of modern populations. In this regard, additional efforts in the full mtDNA analyses of nomad Northern African populations might resolve the debate concerning their origin and their mutual relationship.
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The Tuareg of the Fezzan region (Libya) are characterized by an extremely high frequency (61%) of haplogroup H1, a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup that is common in all Western European populations. To define how and when H1 spread from Europe to North Africa up to the Central Sahara, in Fezzan, we investigated the complete mitochondrial genomes of eleven Libyan Tuareg belonging to H1. Coalescence time estimates suggest an arrival of the European H1 mtDNAs at about 8,000–9,000 years ago, while phylogenetic analyses reveal three novel H1 branches, termed H1v, H1w and H1x, which appear to be specific for North African populations, but whose frequencies can be extremely different even in relatively close Tuareg villages. Overall, these findings support the scenario of an arrival of haplogroup H1 in North Africa from Iberia at the beginning of the Holocene, as a consequence of the improvement in climate conditions after the Younger Dryas cold snap, followed by in situ formation of local H1 sub-haplogroups. This process of autochthonous differentiation continues in the Libyan Tuareg who, probably due to isolation and recent founder events, are characterized by village-specific maternal mtDNA lineages.
Sarah Tishkoff earlier discovered Eurasians, Mozabites and Fula share Lactose persistance mutations(adults able to digest milk) and some nuclear DNA ancestry so finding more similarity with the Tuareg is no surprise. The Tuareg also have a Y-chromosome relationship to the Beja of Sudan.
Skin color is genetically insignificant and according to Nina Jablonski, skin Melanin concentration can change from light to dark or dark to light in only 100 generations(2000-2500yrs) and can vary with diet.
At 5:00, H.L. Gates,Jr. sees a slave/servant who is owned by his Tuareg Master and at 3:40 a Fulani is shown wearing $4000 Gold Earrings.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: this shows how speculative anthropology is
somebody could go into the above text, quote select passages and make whatever case they wanted
Again, your entire premise is about guess work, lies, and speculation. It's been 155 days (and counting) since you made the asinine statement that "whites will turn black if they live near the equator," yet you have failed to provide one shred of evident to support you bullshiit claim.
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness: this shows how speculative anthropology is
somebody could go into the above text, quote select passages and make whatever case they wanted
Again, your entire premise is about guess work, lies, and speculation. It's been 155 days (and counting) since you made the asinine statement that "whites will turn black if they live near the equator," yet you have failed to provide one shred of evident to support you bullshiit claim.
It's funny how people pop up in unrelated threads threads coming out with some quote I made that bugged them. We are talking about Berbers and North Africa. Ok you need lioness attention, like so many female deprived folk around here:
how do you know it's bullshit? It's not. One example ,the people of Central and South America they are dark skinned. They came from Asia over the Berring straight. Many of the people (not all) form that East Asian region, China and so on have skin as light as Caucasians due to less sunlight and diet. But as some migrated down south into North and South America, by percentage they became darker. You do not understand how evolutionary selection works. Look at the wide diversity of Africans for example. How did that happen?
Mutation.
For example the San people of Southern Africa. Recent DNA studies suggest they may have been the earliest humans. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/worlds-most-ancient-race-traced-in-dna-study-1677113.htmlAlthough Their skin is much lighter than people closer to the equator. If they were the first humans and some migrated toward the equator. This is another example of the skin darkening according to conditions. Random mutations occur all the time many not even caused by the environment. Many of these mutations happen on very slight levels that you might not notice, not a freak thing. Within the very same tribe you have some people who are taller than others, slightly darker or lighter than others, some stronger or weaker than others, some smarter than others. What happens is that the person who just by random coincidence is better suited to the environment has more children and the ability to support them. Let say one man is stronger than another or has better eyesight. They might breed more. They might be better hunters or providers. So if you have light skinned people going into high sunlight areas before they even get there some of them are going to very very slightly lighter or darker than others, even brother to brother have slight differences. You might not even be able to detect a difference with your eyes. But over thousands of years these little differences add up. What happens is that of the light skinned people who are accustomed to a lower sunlight environment, go into such an environment and settle, what's going to happen? Some individuals will be slightly darker than others and they will survive better. They will have more kids. Many people may be the same shade as each other but some may be slightly lighter or darker than most. even at a microscopic level. There will then be more kids who are now a tiny bit darker, than the lighter individuals that had less kids. Then they have kids. The same thing happens. Most of the kids are like the parents, slightly darker than the previous generation because they were the group that had the advantage and breeded more. Among them let's say half will be individuals who are yet even darker hen their parents ( a tiny bit you might not even be able to detect it with your eye) This half of the kids grows up and survives a tiny bit better and this half of the kids has more kids. The process continues like this. A few thousand years later you can see a significant difference. The population is changing in some way. What nature does it spits out randomly slight variations of creatures all the time. A lot of times these variations may have no effect. other times the mutations turn out to be either a disadvantage or an advantage in a given environment. Then certain individuals start thriving a little better than others. There are exceptions. But if you look at the big picture this is how it works. It's very simple. In a given group there are still slight differences in individuals. The ones that have an advantage that matches the condition they are in reproduce more and the other people reproduce less. If you look at a group of five people you are not going to see this. If you look at patterns of thousands of people in such a group these patterns can be seen happening. It's called selection. If you leave humans in any condition as they die and new children are born over time the children will be a tiny bit better suited to the environment. So if the sunlight is heavier, through this process the child may becomes lighter or darker or any number of different adaptive traits. If they migrate they may lose an advantage but that might have to happen if something like the food supply runs out in a given area. You can find many exceptions to the effect of sunlight or lack of it on people and some of this has to do with diet and other factors like forest and cloud cover. But exceptions don't disprove the rule. If you look generally look at the broad patterns it's becomes obvious that people are darker near the equator in the vast majority of cases. If you study animals you can see many different adaptations they have to environmental conditions.For example cold climate animals are very different than hot climate animals. It takes thousands and sometimes millions of years to build up as the generations cycle.
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how do you know it's bullshit? It's not. One example ,the people of Central and South America they are dark skinned. They came from Asia over the Berring straight. Many of the people (not all) form that East Asian region, China and so on have skin as light as Caucasians due to less sunlight and diet. But as some migrated down south into North and South America, by percentage they became darker. You do not understand how evolutionary selection works...
First of all, the people of Central and South America come from multiple migratory events, not some single event. Secondly, the darkly pigmented groups there are that way, because their ancestors were also darkly pigmented. How did you arrive at the idea that they derived from "white" populations who turned "darkly pigmented"?
Ps: Do you realize that the evolutionary constraints on retaining dark pigmentation is such that it takes more [evolutionary] effort to assume dark pigmentation [i.e. beyond tanning] than say, for darkly pigmented populations to loose pigmentation [including giving rise to "white" groups]?
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posted
Explorer before we get to details, let me ask you the basic question that was asked of me.
Question: Will a human population develop darker skin over time if they enter an environment that exposes them to higher UV levels.?
JMT says no. I say yes. (keep in mind many on this forum do not believe in evolution at all-and even those that do to don't like mention it much for some reason)
Secondly please look at the above study
Mitochondrial Haplogroup H1 in North Africa: An Early Holocene Arrival from Iberia (2010)
and comment
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Explorer before we get to details, let me ask you the basic question that was asked of me.
Question: Will a human population develop darker skin over time if they enter an environment that exposes them to higher UV levels.?
I haven't come across any example of a human population that has gone through what you are stating above. Have you? If so, name it and elaborate.
quote:
Secondly please look at the above study
Mitochondrial Haplogroup H1 in North Africa: An Early Holocene Arrival from Iberia (2010)
and comment
What is there to comment on? We've covered the topic of Tamasheq mtDNA pool on many occasions.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
I don't care about whether or not any the Berbers are "white". Yes, it does appear that Iberians mixed with indigenous Africans a long time ago to produce light-skinned northwest Africans, but what does that have to do with ancient Egypt, the civilization we're all interested in? Just because prehistoric Europeans apparently colonized a strip of Africa that lies north of the Atlas Mountains doesn't mean more than a trickle of their genes made it across hundreds of miles of desert to the Nile Valley.
theres a brand new study here. do you ever update?
Do you ever keep up with topics already covered? Again, what is here that needs special commenting on that hasn't already been discussed, and why?
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Finally catching on. On the band wagon . . now. BTW it has little to do with admixture.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: One example ,the people of Central and South America they are dark skinned. They came from Asia over the Berring straight. Many of the people (not all) form that East Asian region, China and so on have skin as light as Caucasians due to less sunlight and diet. But as some migrated down south into North and South America, by percentage they became darker. You do not understand how evolutionary selection works. = Look at the wide diversity of Africans for example. How did that happen?
Mutation.
For example the San people of Southern Africa. Recent DNA studies suggest they may have been the earliest humans. .
Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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You do realize you are being hypocritical. Ypu accept the premise that light skin can change back to dark as these people move south towards the equator but reject the fact AEians can be black. AEians came from the south traveling down the nile. Some came from the Sahara. All came from the "dark" regions of Africa but you insist them being "mixed"
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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quote:Originally posted by xyyman: [QB] You do realize you are being hypocritical. Ypu accept the premise that light skin can change back to dark as these people move south towards the equator but reject the fact AEians can be black.
I don't reject the fact that Egypt had a lot of Negroid people just like all over Africa, south of Egypt. I just think there was a variety of folks including some other Egyptians who came from regions North of Egypt. I think it was multi-racial and also included many intermediary people who don't fit neatly into the simplistic and inaccurately named "black" and "white" categories.
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness: I just think there was a variety of folks . . included many intermediary people who don't fit INTO WHAT I CONSIDER AN AFRICAN
well said!!!
So where did these non-negroid people come from after all up to about 6kBC, AEian pre-history, the Levant, Libya, AND Islands north were occupied by "negroid" people?
Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness: I just think there was a variety of folks including some other Egyptians who came from regions North of Egypt.
well said!!!
So where did these non-negroid people come from after all up to about 6kBC, AEian pre-history, the Levant, Libya, AND Islands north were occupied by "negroid" people?
there were the migrations of the sea people starting 4000 years ago and the Hyksos rule over a large part of Egypt for 100 years, plus the Kings like to fool around with concubines from Caanan
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: I just think there was a variety of folks . . included many intermediary people who don't fit INTO WHAT I CONSIDER AN AFRICAN
well said!!!
So where did these non-negroid people come from after all up to about 6kBC, AEian pre-history, the Levant, Libya, AND Islands north were occupied by "negroid" people?
Perchance the "wandering Caucasoids" of "biodiversity" lore..
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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zarahan, you're such a straw manner. You always try to fit people's views into a pre-conceived stereotype.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan: ^
In light of what the above study concluded:
Overall, the results of this study support the hypothesis that most of the West Eurasian maternal contribution detectable in Northwest African populations is likely linked to prehistoric (i.e. the post-glacial expansion from the Iberian Peninsula) rather than more recent historic events
Do the lighter skinned Berbers many but not all Mozabite fit into that statement?
Doctoris Scientia had said they were 80% African. What is your position on this? See if you can answer a direct question rather than use it as another excuse to put up your graphics which often don't answer directly, thank you. (imagine if everyone had their own self promoting premade graphics and replied with with them)
I don't know what the answer is about these Mozabites. I tend to think they are related to migrants from Asia who went into N. Africa before 6K. Doc had speculated that they may have developed lighter skin due to sexual selection and isolation. Others interpret the Tishkoff study in different ways. It's also true that like the Khosians their skin tone is lighter(but here, not as yellow) But their features do not look 80% African to me, more like 30-40%.
Now if somebody tries to argue that Africans can have any features than that argument would lend itself to the belief that lighter skinned Mozabites and other lighter skinned Moroccans could be 80% African and the lighter skin tone evolved within Africa, I tend not to believe it.
However the term "African" is unspecified as to how long you have to live in a region before being called of that region. The continental name is arbitrary. Who's to say an dark skinned Saudi Arab isn't more related to a Tuareg than a Nigerian regardless of the fact that Arabia is not in Africa. That would be an interesting comparison on the genetic level.
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Doctoris Scientia had said they were 80% African.
Doctoris scientia is not a published geneticist, his words mean absolutely nada as a refernce when trying to prove something genetically. Try again.
Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: I wonder how long it'll take this study to reach the masses? Will it's importance ever be taken into account or will people continue to equate Berber-speakers with Europeans and Arabs?
I've tried to access the article but I have no access to it via the link on the website
Posts: 2595 | From: Vicksburg | Registered: Feb 2006
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan: Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations
Frigi et al.
Human Biology (August 2010 (82:4)
Abstract
Our objective is to highlight the age of sub-Saharan gene flows in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia. Therefore we analyzed in a broad phylogeographic context sub-Saharan mtDNA haplogroups of Tunisian Berber populations considered representative of ancient settlement. More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 years BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. 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.
Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations
Frigi et al.
Human Biology
August 2010 (82:4)
Discussion In this study we attempted to better elucidate the ancient African genetic background in the northwest African area, particularly in Tunisia. To this aim, we focused our study on Berber populations that are considered representative of the ancient North African populations that probably derived from Neolithic Capsians. During historic times, Berbers experienced a long and complicated history with many invasions, conquests, and migrations by Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Bedouins, Spanish, Turks, Andalusians, sub-Saharans (communities settled in Jerba and Gabes in the 16th–19th centuries), and French (Brett and Fentress 1996). During these invasions, Berbers were forced back to the mountains and to certain villages in southern Tunisia (Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004). At present, they are restricted to some isolates in the south who maintain the Berber language and to some populations in the north who lack an origin language. Many genetic studies on Tunisian Berber populations demonstrate the heterogeneity of Berbers with respect to European and sub-Saharan African contributions and the mosaic structure of Tunisian Berber populations with an absence of ethnic, linguistic, and geographic effects (Cherni et al. 2010).
In the present work, mtDNA data show a diversified distribution of African haplogroups. However, a question remains concerning the date of the sub-Saharan African inputs. Our results demonstrate an ancient local evolution in Tunisia of some African haplogroups (L2a, L3*, and L3b). The most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced from eastern sub-Saharan populations to North Africa about 20,000 years ago. The Siwa oasis sample studied by Coudray et al. (2009) contains sub-Saharan haplogroups L0a1, L3i, L4*, and L4b2, which are different from our Tunisian samples, in agreement with the heterogeneity of Berbers already shown in Tunisia.
Stevanovitch et al. (2004) suggested that the Gurna population in Egypt has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population characterized by a high haplogroup M1 frequency. This haplogroup is also present in three Berber populations (Kesra, Matmata, and Sned) with variable frequencies. In each of these populations, haplogroup L3* is also present. The association of both eastern African haplogroups in the Berber populations is a strong argument in favor of eastern African gene flow in Berbers. Other genetic and archaeological studies confirmed the crucial idea that an ancient population in East Africa constituted the basis of the ancestors of all African Upper Paleolithic populations—and their subsequent present-day descendants (Bengtson 2008; Keita 2004; Relethford 2000; Zakrzewski 2003, 2007).
Moreover, Berber languages spoken exclusively by North African populations belong to the Afro-Asiatic language. Diakonoff (1998) showed an exclusively African origin (Diakonoff, 1981, 1988) for the family. He explicitly described proto-Afro-Asiatic vocabulary as consistent with non-food-producing vocabulary and linked it to pre-Neolithic cultures in the Levant and in Africa south of Egypt. Moreover, Ehret. (2003) suggested that early Afro-Asiatic languages were spread by Mesolithic foragers from Africa into the Levant. On the contrary, Diamond and Bellwood (2003) suggested that food production and the Afro-Asiatic language family were brought simultaneously from the Near East to Africa by demic diffusion—in other words, by a migration of food-producing peoples. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom (1993) does not support this latter suggestion, however, and indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially incorporated Near Eastern domesticates into an existing indigenous foraging strategy and only over time developed a dependence on horticulture.
In conclusion, the crucial linguistic finding is that the three deepest clades of the Afro-Asiatic family are localized in Eritrea and Ethiopia. All the other languages of the family outside that region belong to subclades of just one of those deep clades. This kind of cladistic distribution is a basic criterion of the genetic argument for the genetic lineage origins well understood by geneticists. It applies to linguistic history as well.
Our results also point to a less ancient western African gene flow to Tunisia involving haplogroups L2a and L3b. Thus the sub-Saharan contribution to northern Africa starting from the east would have taken place before the Neolithic. The western African contribution to North Africa should have occurred before the Sahara’s formation (15,000 years BP). It seems likely that an expansion would have taken place in the Sahel zone starting about the time of a gradual climatic return to wetter conditions, when the Senegal River cut through the dunes (Burke et al. 1971). For subhaplogroup L2a1 (data not shown) we found some haplotypes that the Tunisian Berbers shared with Mauritanians and western sub-Saharan populations speaking a Niger-Congo language (studied by Salas et al. 2002).
This suggests that the people who brought these markers to the Berber populations most likely came from West African populations that spoke languages belonging to the Niger-Congo family when the Sahara became drier. However, this contribution of West African haplotypes and of other haplotypes, such as those belonging to haplogroup L1b1, could have been introduced to North Africa more recently.
Indeed, this West African contribution was difficult to date, because few haplotypes belonging to western African haplogroups have been observed, most of them being divergent. This result can be interpreted in different ways. Ancient western African mtDNA contributions could have disappeared from North Africa as a result of recent flows, or the situation observed now could be the result of a strong drift effect on ancient western African lineages, particularly those belonging to haplogroups L2a and L3b. A strong Iberian gene flow may have contributed to the decrease in African haplogroups. Indeed, most of the older hypotheses about North African population settlement used to suppose an Iberian or an eastern origin. The dates for subhaplogroups H1 and H3 (13,000 and 10,000 years, respectively) in Iberian and North African populations allow for this possibility. Kefi et al.’s (2005) data on ancient DNA could be viewed as being in agreement with such a presence in North Africa in ancient times (about 15,000–6,000 years ago) and with the fact that the North African populations are considered by most scholars as having their closest relations with European and Asian populations (Cherni et al. 2008; Ennafaa et al. 2009; Kefi et al. 2005; Rando et al. 1998).
However, considering the general understanding nowadays that human settlement of the rest of the world emerged from eastern northern Africa less than 50,000 years ago, a better explanation of these haplogroups might be that their frequencies reflect the original modern human population of these parts of Africa as much as or more than intrusions from outside the continent. The ways that gene frequencies may increase or decrease based on adaptive selection, gene flow, and/or social processes is under study and would benefit from the results of studies on autosomal and Y-chromosome markers.
Since the end of the extreme Saharan desiccation, lasting from before 25,000 years ago up to about 15,000 years ago, the Sahara has had post- and pre- Holocene cyclical climatic changes (Street and Grove 1976), and corresponding increases and decreases in population are probable. Wetter phases with better habitats perhaps allowed for increased colonization and gene and cultural exchange. Desiccation would have encouraged the emigration and segmentation of populations, with resultant genetic consequences secondary to drift producing more variation. During the last glacial period, the Sahara was even bigger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries (Ehret 2002). About 13,000 years ago, large parts of the Sahara were as dry as the desert is now (White and Mattingly 2006). The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara, especially from about 8500 to 6000 BC (Fezzan Project 2006). By around 3400 BC, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the gradual desertification of the region (Kröpelin 2008). Thus the Sahara, through its cyclical environmental changes, might be seen as a microevolutionary “processor” and/or “pump” of African people that “ejected” groups to the circum-Saharan regions in times of increasing aridity.
Indeed, it must be noted that the high frequencies of cDe, P, and V antigens and low frequencies of FY antigens in some Berber-speaking groups (Chamla 1980; Mourant et al. 1976) indicate affinities with tropical Africans. These data may indicate recent or ancient gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, a common immediate pre-Holocene ancestral group, or chance resemblance.
Our findings are in accordance with other studies on Y-chromosome markers that have shown that the predominant Y-chromosome lineage in Berber communities is the subhaplogroup E1b1b1b (E-M81), which emerged in Africa, is specific to North African populations, and is almost absent in Europe, except in Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and Sicily. Molecular studies on the Y chromosome in North Africa are interpreted as indicating that the southern part of Africa, namely, the Horn/East Africa, was a major source of population in the Nile Valley and northwest Africa after the Last Glacial Maximum, with some migration into the Near East and southern Europe (Bosch et al. 2001; Underhill et al. 2001). Hence, contrary to the suggestion that mtDNA haplogroups were introduced mostly from Iberia, it seems that Y-chromosome markers have an eastern African origin with an ancient local evolution in North Africa. These observations are in agreement with the proposal that the ancient communities ancestral in language to more recent Berber communities absorbed a lot of females from the existing pre-Holocene populations. This would indicate that the North African populations arose from admixture rather than from local evolution, leading to an intermediate genetic structure between eastern sub-Saharan Africans and Eurasians. Rock paintings in North Africa that show people of different phenotypes living together are a strong argument for our hypothesis (Hachid 1982, 1992, 1998).
In conclusion, our findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present study suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. 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.
Biocultural Emergence of the Amazigh in Africa: Comment on Frigi et al. (2010) S. O. Y. Keita. Human Biology (August 2010) (82:4)
Frigi et al. [2010 (this issue)] present some new findings on a population of Amazigh—Berber speakers in Tunisia. Although their study is not exhaustive, they provide an outline of human population history in the Maghreb and a general discussion of its mtDNA diversity. Their work is important in inviting researchers to think about the concepts of continuity and change in biology, culture, language, and identity in a geographic space. Their presentation helps in understanding the complexity of examining the ancestry and emergence of Berber origins in Africa as a local process and encourages the consideration of many questions about how the human biology and culture of a known population or ethnolinguistic group can be conceptualized through space and time.
Berber- (Tamazight-) speaking communities are thought to represent the clearest known descendants of the ancient indigenous populations of Africa west of the northern Nile valley in the supra-Saharan and northern Saharan regions (Brett and Fentress 1996; Camps 1982; Desanges 1981). “Indigenous” here can refer only to those whom we can perceive as having had the longest tenure on the land, using available historical evidence. However, there are questions. What constitutes “historical evidence” for earlier periods? Should it include archaeology, paleontology, historical linguistics, skeletal biology, and genetics, as broadly advocated by a historical anthropological approach (e.g., Kirch and Green 2001; Mace et al. 2005)? Or is it only to be based on the interpretation of texts from the ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, or Islamic periods [e.g., see comments by Brett and Fentress (1996), Desanges (1981), Norris 1982, and Snowden (1971)]?
How is the varied evidence to be ranked in importance, reconciled when it seems to be in contradiction, and analyzed synthetically? A simplistic positivism has to be avoided in discussions of any facet of human history because various pathways could lead to similar results. What is the role of evolutionary mechanisms—adaptive selection, gene flow, drift, sexual selection—in explaining the biology of some of the ancestors of Berber speakers at the deepest time levels and of living Amazigh as well? Frigi et al. (2010) do not address all these questions directly, but their work implicitly acknowledges their importance and provides a new framework for investigation.
Braudel’s (1980) concept of different levels of history can be adapted and adopted in a modified form as levels of biocultural or bioethnic history, to further consider Frigi and colleagues’ contribution, which implicitly acknowledges the contingent and multidimensional character of population interactions through time against an evolutionary background.
Another issue of some interest is the (mis)labeling of Berbers as “Eurasian” migrants from the Near East: Did they arrive as a unit from Asia or Europe, as a settler colonist “package” with a persistent identity analogous to Europeans in South Africa, or did the biology, language, and culture of the Amazigh emerge primarily from a set of interactions in Africa involving African peoples at base, that is, as a part of authentic African historical and biological processes? There are no ancient Berber communities outside Africa, and the idea of simple demic diffusion of Berbers as a people to the Maghreb (e.g., Arredi et al. 2004) from the Near East is not supported. It is of some interest that even Coon and Hunt (1965), using a raciotypological paradigm now long discredited, postulated a massive invasion of Africa by “Caucasians” in the Pleistocene and therefore thought that Berber language and identity had entered the Maghreb from more southerly regions in Africa. Frigi and colleagues suggest that several populations over time were involved in the biological ancestry of the current Berber speakers, and this is consistent with archaeological evidence of actual migration in the mid- to late Holocene (Camps 1982) as well as historical documentation. Craniofacial diversity has been documented in the region before Vandal and Arab migrations (Keita 1990).
It is important to remember that biology, language, and culture are not intrinsically or obligatorily correlated, a principle established some time ago (Boas 1940). It is not particularly surprising that one can sometimes find markers that will correlate across biology and culture at some levels—but the issue is how this came to be and when, and what it represents historically and socially. There is always the question of whether the correlation is an artifact of recent events or of “primordial” ontology. A language or language family can be adopted slowly or rapidly by nonnative speakers. The current biological profile of a region may predate (or postdate) the language spoken there. Communities may adopt (nonlinguistic) cultural practices from others without greatly changing language or biology; or they may become primarily integrated linguistically and politically but not biologically or exhibit other permutations of these variables, such as total biocultural assimilation. The biology of a particular ethnolinguistic group or community may change based on intermarriage if the social rules allow the offspring to become group members. Such matings may have occurred long before the recall of communal memory, whether in texts or oral tradition. Relatively nonethnocentric polygamous societies or populations may have cultural descendants who are genealogically heterogeneous when viewed over a millennium.
Frigi et al. (2010) suggest these possibilities as factors in their consideration of the asymmetric assimilation of females of non-African origin into Berber-speaking populations whose males currently have a predominance of lineages defined by the African M35/81 biallelic marker. It is interesting that these “non-African” mtDNA lineages are usually predominant while being diverse (Coudray et al. 2009; Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004; Khodjet-el-Khil et al. 2008). The existence of mtDNA lineages common to Saami and some Amazigh groups (Achilli et al.
2005) is likely to be explained by the migration of females bearing these lineages from a region in northern Europe (perhaps in the ranks of the Vandals or far more ancient back-migrations to Africa), whether they were ethnically Saami or not. However, there may have been other locales where these lineages once existed. Circular reasoning in syntheses involving multiple disciplines has to be avoided. The criteria and methods for a given discipline usually have to be given equal weight, and their results should be considered independently before an effort at synthesis is made. For example, a hypothesis about the place of origin of a language family or phylum must be based on linguistic evidence and methods, not on DNA or craniofacial patterns. Likewise the place of origin of a particular genetic variant or lineage has to be based on genetic data, principles, and models, not on archaeological data. The locale of origin of a particular culture or archaeological industry is subject to analyses based on methods and theory that are specific to the relevant disciplines.
The only exception to these “rules” is if a calculated date of origin of a genetic variant found in a given locale predates the existence of people in that place. Although the notion of population ties together both biology and culture broadly conceived, it cannot be claimed that continuity in one necessarily means continuity in another. If the question is about physical population migration, then the same conclusion reached from every discipline independently would seem to best support the claim (Rouse 1986). However, it cannot be said absolutely that there was no movement if all lines of evidence do not point in the same direction. The idea of Occam’s razor may sometimes mean accepting the reality of human complexity and an inability to reconcile evidence with preconceived models.
Frigi et al. (2010) have provided a general temporal framework for Maghreb population history, from the Paleolithic to French colonization. This is appropriate given the evidence for early modern human behavior and life history in the Maghreb (Bouzouggar et al. 2007; T. Smith et al. 2007), the diversity of various epi-Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures in or near the region associated with climatic changes (Lubell et al. 1984; Rahmani 2003, 2004; Sereno et al. 2008; Sheppard and Lubell 1990), and the interactions with known “peoples” at later dates (Bennett 1960; Brown 1968; Desanges 1981; Hirschberg 1960; Nebel 2002).
In reviewing data from multiple disciplines, Frigi and colleagues have given the region’s populations a multidimensional existence. In providing evidence for the ongoing microevolution in the Maghreb of ancient mtDNA lineages that emerged in Africa and evidence of later gene flow from multiple directions, they have revealed that this region has biological continuity with the deep past as well as change.
Frigi and colleagues may have inadvertently revealed peoples whose ancestors had a level of cultural flexibility in accepting outsiders as mates. As noted, the male and female histories of a population may be different in their sources (Wilkins 2006), although they are now seen as part of a recognizable biocultural entity with a categorically singular identity. How is the emergence of the Amazigh peoples in the geographic range of their homeland to be understood in terms of culture, language, and biology? In some sense the question is about origins, a term that can be confusing because of its various meanings. It can be applied to different aspects of a population—which can be disarticulated and can change as a function of time. Ancestry must not be confused with explanation, or gene history with population or culture history. Known ancestors and the “ancestors of one’s genes” are not the same things necessarily (Weiss and Long 2009).
Can a narrative of “origins” be constructed on the basis of an internal perspective of the dynamics of the human communities of northwestern Africa, considered through time? Or is this region simply an appendage of other places? Sometimes the Amazigh, by use of the term “Eurasian” in a categorical model of analysis, are placed in a raciotypological model without reference to evolution and their indigenous emergence in Africa. (It can be ventured that this is largely based on nonevolutionary ideas about phenotype, notions of bounded unchanging populations, problematic assumptions about language families, and certain old attitudes and theories about Africa.)
Frigi and colleagues have documented the deep-time biological connections of current Berber speakers to Africa. The migration of “Europeans” and “Asians” is also discussed. There has been continuity and change in the population from original settlement. It is important to remember that high levels of gene flow and biocultural assimilation could lead to great biological heterogeneity in a population whose language family or culture does not change. Frigi and colleagues address the idea of the indigenous, although not explicitly, and lay the groundwork for more nuanced future discussions. They suggest a complex biogeographic history not reducible to raciotypological constructs or outdated simplistic theories of colonization and migration. They provide a basis for a rich discussion by acknowledging the interactions of known peoples in the Maghreb and unknown actors of a deeper past. The issue of what is indigenous is seen to be one of definition, turning on what aspect of a population or region is ranked as its “defining” characteristic, and whether this may change or could have changed over time. The term indigenous unfortunately is connected to a discourse about the West and non-West and sometimes has a negative sensibility and hence may not be the best word, but a discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this presentation. Of course “indigenous” is a relative term when the temporal scope of human evolution and history is considered, and it even seems to depend to a degree on what part of the world is under discussion. Europe can serve as a good example. If it is asked who are the “indigenous” Europeans, there would probably be a request to clarify the time depth, given that modern humans are not native to Europe and arrived there from elsewhere.
(The next question therefore is at what point do they become “European” and what precisely does this mean: current limb proportions, skin color, genetic variation, language, the presence of Neanderthal DNA?) Does “indigenousness” require residency back to the upper Paleolithic, the Neolithic, and so on? Is it only a biological phenomenon requiring a “drop” of Neanderthal blood or a linguistic phenomenon requiring the speaking of Indo-European languages? Or if the question is who were the indigenous inhabitants of northern, southern, western, eastern, or central Europe, the answers would necessarily take on a different tone, based on other information.
Are the Basque speakers the indigenous inhabitants of Europe, if currently spoken language phyla and families are used as “population markers,” a problematic assumption? Basque predates Indo-European, and there is some indication of some level of biological distinctiveness (Alonso et al. 2005). The fact that historical linguists (e.g., Ehret 2002; Nichols 1997) can reconstruct the existence of culture-linguistic units for a proto-language family (e.g., Adamawa) or phylum (e.g., Niger-Congo), which may have migrated, does not mean that they are suggesting that the people making up such entities connote genetic units or Mendelian breeding populations. It also does not mean that the speakers of such proto-entities had a common molecular or social genealogical origin at foundation, or that the linguists are suggesting this.
Defining “origins” or “indigenous” becomes one of perspective. How much “Basque ancestry” would a European population have to have for the label of “indigenous European” to apply? If none, why not? (What is the relationship between cultural and biological genealogy?) Can it be assumed that the Basques of today biologically represent those of the past “accurately”? The post-Paleolithic European assimilation of males from Africa and Asia bearing younger genetic variants is documented (Cruciani et al. 2004, 2007): Are such ancient admixed populations to be viewed as “less” European or non-European? Are Nordics or the Basques the “standard” European? Is language, biology, culture, geography, or something else the arbiter of European-ness? In practice, this question seems to be little asked in studies of Europeans: All these groups and nationalities are considered European with little question. Aegean peoples are not presented as “hybrids.” The linguistic and genetic diversity is not a factor in the designation of “indigenous” for Europe.
But in the case of Africa there seems to be a problem with diversity for some scholars. The Indo-European language phylum, in the standard evidence-based interpretation, did not originate in the European heartland (Ehret, personal communication, 2010). Most people in Europe today speak Indo-European languages—now considered as “indigenous” as Basque. What does it mean for the concept of European if Europe’s major language phylum did not originate in what is considered Europe proper? How much of the spread of early Indo-European was due to outright settler colonization and how much to language shift—these are questions that will likely be debated for some time. Are the Finns, Saami, and Hungarians (or their “original” ancestors)—all non-Indo- European-speaking—to be considered Europeans? Apparently so. Contrast this with ideas held by some about Berbers as “Eurasians” who speak a language family that belongs to a phylum whose proto-parent emerged in Africa using standard historical linguistic criteria and whose major history and differentiation occurred in Africa (Ehret 2002; Greenberg 1963; Nichols 1997). In discussions about Europe, geography seems to be enough to define what is “indigenous”— with the exception of the Turks. This contrast deserves review by students of the sociology of knowledge.
The European example is relevant to the discussion of Berbers because of the use of terms by some researchers that imply that Berbers are not an African development, an African people, in their beginning and current state. Calling the Amazigh “Eurasian” based primarily on skin color without a discussion of process in history, language, evolution, and Y-chromosome variants can easily be seen as problematic when literature about Europe is examined carefully. The possibility of asymmetric gene flow with more Eurasian females being assimilated into the ancient Maghreb—and their lineages simply differentially surviving in greater frequencies—is addressed in a preliminary fashion by Frigi et al. (2010) and further engages us in the history of social interactions that may influence population biology.
Returning to the Amazigh, the findings and comments of Frigi et al. (2010) on Tunisian Berbers, and Berbers in general, suggest a new way of looking at the Maghreb region of Africa. Their review and analysis offer the opportunity to begin to develop a new and nuanced narrative about the peopling of the region, one that avoids the biases of past writings. Their findings of ongoing evolution in the Maghreb of ancient mtDNA lineages that originated in Africa, synthesized with the evidence of the assimilation of migrants (mainly female?) from Europe and the Near East, the predominance of uniquely African Y-chromosome lineages, and the observation that Berber is the only extant indigenous language in the region suggest the workings of both biological and cultural processes. There are clearly different levels of biological and cultural history. Except in situations of migrationist settler colonialism associated with the annihilation or conquest of local peoples, groups emerge from local elements and new additions—all influenced by the social and physical environments. This view of populations as assemblages and processes is different from a notion of them as essentialist primordial entities with fixed traits having continuity over time. In any geographic space groups can interact at various levels with various strictures; languages can be adopted partly or fully, and social rules may allow the acceptance of offspring by foreign females but not males, or vice versa. It is possible for a group to view itself as genealogically homogeneous by memory but to evince a genetic heterogeneity of lineages obtained in the remote past. “Admixture” in the late Pleistocene in the deep background of a regional population is to be differentiated from gene flow between known historical entities.
Frigi and colleagues’ suggestion that supra-Saharan Africans are an indigenous development with a complex story is a corrective to past models. The settlement of the coastal Maghreb in the Middle and Late Stone Age is a part of the settlement of the world outside Saharo-tropical Africa. The early modern human presence in the Maghreb suggests that that region played a role in modern human developments (Bouzouggar et al. 2007). Even if whole communities later came from outside Africa into the Maghreb (before the Phoenicians), which is not knowable, they became thoroughly assimilated into the autochthonous population— which adopted some of its culture (Camps 1982), and their descendants are a part of the emergence of the much later Amazigh world. Less arid climatic conditions in the early to mid-Holocene Sahara allowed for the interaction of various peoples who no doubt contributed to the population history, as observed by Frigi et al. (2010). Saharan developments likely help to explain the Berber emergence, because, based on recent work [see Kuper and Kropelin (2006) and Sereno et al. (2008)], the desert was likely the site of a metapopulation and cultural differentiation. Whether the early Saharan rock paintings depict only Africans of varying phenotypes or such Africans and Asians (as suggested by Frigi and colleagues) can be debated, but the net result was assimilation into Amazigh communities, because there are no Berbers in Europe or Asia. The light skin color of Mediterranean Africa may be the result of adaptive evolution or drift, given the length of time of modern people in Africa, including the Maghreb, or gene flow, but more likely some combination.
The Maghreb has several Neolithic traditions (Camps 1982; Phillipson 2005), which might indicate different peoples or simply cultural adoption or adaptation by heterogeneous populations who became unified under singular cultural practices and one language family. The Neolithic Capsian tradition shows continuity with previous cultures, with evidence of these accepting domesticated sheep and goat into a local subsistence pattern, thus becoming Neolithicized with a pastoralist economy (Rahmani, 2003, 2004; Sheppard and Lubell 1990). A. B. Smith (2005) and McDonald (1998) indicate the importance of pastoralism in the Holocene Sahara, and this economy may help in the understanding of Berber emergence. In the coastal Maghreb various Neolithic and post-Neolithic interregional interactions are in evidence, based on archaeology and the eventual settlements of the Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, and others (Camps 1982).
In aggregate, over time, these peoples, along with the later importation of Europeans (Bennett 1960; Davis 2004), would seemingly have contributed far more to the current biological picture than has been realized. The much later trans-Saharan trade in enslaved individuals no doubt played a role in genetic contributions, but the egress from a desiccating Sahara with subsequent population formations would explain some of the younger “sub-Saharan” variation, be it from western or eastern Africa. The “Eurasian” component seems to have come in over a longer period of time, as noted earlier. A small amount of gene flow per generation into a population or geographic region can drastically change its original gene frequencies in only a few thousand years, as noted by Cavalli-Sforza (1991).
The development of a narrative of the population history of the Maghreb requires careful analysis using several approaches. Frigi and colleagues have made an important contribution to studies of African human biology and culture in suggesting the complexity of Maghreban population history.
Thank you again - Zarahan - the studies u've uncovered have once again have closed the door on Eurowacky speculation about a EURASIAN Aorigins of the early BErbers and have proven once and for all that East African men settling in North AFrican areas such as Tunisia have taken countless non-African i.e. Eurasiatic women producing the modern northernmost Berber-speaking peoples. BRAVO!
Of course other groups like the lighter skinned Mozabites(as opposed to dark-skinned Mzab of Ilam stock) are a result of Iranian comers to Africa mixing with the Ilam Berbers. Similarly Greeks and Romans settled in Kabylia where we have now fair=skinned Kabyles still making their Greek pottery and dressed Balkan style living in a separate area from darker skinned Kabyles who still look and dance as do other dark-skinned Berbers like East Africans.
Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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"Many genetic studies on Tunisian Berber populations demonstrate the HETEROGENEITY of Berbers with respect to European and sub-Saharan African contributions and the mosaic structure of Tunisian Berber populations ...(Cherni et al. 2010)."
Populations consisting of heterogeneous origins both Africa and Europe are numerous in modern North Africa. Genetics strikes again!
Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by the lynass: I just think there was a variety of folks including some other Egyptians who came from regions North of Egypt...
Of course, but this mainly happened post-dynastic times especially during the Islamic period.
quote:I think it was multi-racial and also included many intermediary people who don't fit neatly into the simplistic and inaccurately named "black" and "white" categories.
That's funny because even mainstream academic sources like Cambridge and Oxford teach that ancient Egypt was an AFRICAN society peopled by indigenous Africans. Again, large scale admixture didn't occur until much later times.
In the mean time, what do you consider Ancient Greece? You do realize that Greeks have mixed with West Asians and even Africans since the neolithic, yet no doubt you and your cohorts consider them to be white Europeans, why is that??
Posts: 26267 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote: think it was multi-racial and also included many intermediary people who don't fit neatly into the simplistic and inaccurately named "black" and "white" categories
^ it is the construct of race itself that is simplistic.
multi-race is no less a flawed concept than pure race, or mixed race.
they are all really the *same* concept.
the one implies the existence of the others.
Posts: 23 | Registered: Dec 2010
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quote: think it was multi-racial and also included many intermediary people who don't fit neatly into the simplistic and inaccurately named "black" and "white" categories
^ it is the construct of race itself that is simplistic.
multi-race is no less a flawed concept than pure race, or mixed race.
they are all really the *same* concept.
the one implies the existence of the others.
logical, It's all elements of brown rather than black or white White people have a smaller amount of brown melanin, when you mix that with the white layers of skin below the top layer that we all have you get a cream or beige color which have an element of brown. Add to that some transparency of the skin, you get the blood showing through, which is not really skin color but the visual effect is a light pinkish beige. On the other hand there are equatorial people so dark brown they are literally nearly black, perhaps brownish black. Most of us are not, we brown. But skin is superficial anyway
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lynass: I just think there was a variety of folks including some other Egyptians who came from regions North of Egypt...
Of course, but this mainly happened post-dynastic times especially during the Islamic period.
quote:I think it was multi-racial and also included many intermediary people who don't fit neatly into the simplistic and inaccurately named "black" and "white" categories.
That's funny because even mainstream academic sources like Cambridge and Oxford teach that ancient Egypt was an AFRICAN society peopled by indigenous Africans. Again, large scale admixture didn't occur until much later times.
In the mean time, what do you consider Ancient Greece? You do realize that Greeks have mixed with West Asians and even Africans since the neolithic, yet no doubt you and your cohorts consider them to be white Europeans, why is that??
Hmmm ... wonder what the answer to this one will be - if it's ever answered that is. Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness: zarahan, you're such a straw manner. You always try to fit people's views into a pre-conceived stereotype.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan: ^
In light of what the above study concluded:
Overall, the results of this study support the hypothesis that most of the West Eurasian maternal contribution detectable in Northwest African populations is likely linked to prehistoric (i.e. the post-glacial expansion from the Iberian Peninsula) rather than more recent historic events
Do the lighter skinned Berbers many but not all Mozabite fit into that statement?
Doctoris Scientia had said they were 80% African. What is your position on this? See if you can answer a direct question rather than use it as another excuse to put up your graphics which often don't answer directly, thank you. (imagine if everyone had their own self promoting premade graphics and replied with with them)
I don't know what the answer is about these Mozabites. I tend to think they are related to migrants from Asia who went into N. Africa before 6K. Doc had speculated that they may have developed lighter skin due to sexual selection and isolation. Others interpret the Tishkoff study in different ways. It's also true that like the Khosians their skin tone is lighter(but here, not as yellow) But their features do not look 80% African to me, more like 30-40%.
Now if somebody tries to argue that Africans can have any features than that argument would lend itself to the belief that lighter skinned Mozabites and other lighter skinned Moroccans could be 80% African and the lighter skin tone evolved within Africa, I tend not to believe it.
However the term "African" is unspecified as to how long you have to live in a region before being called of that region. The continental name is arbitrary. Who's to say an dark skinned Saudi Arab isn't more related to a Tuareg than a Nigerian regardless of the fact that Arabia is not in Africa. That would be an interesting comparison on the genetic level.
Some facts about the M'zab Berber-speakers - They claim descent from Iranians and Ilam Berbers (still called Aulamidden in Niger) and equally black Ibadite Berbers of Wargla who moved to the region inthe 11th century.
Thus, "In Beni Isguen, the oldest clan, settled at the highest point in the city, near the watchtower, comes from a Berber family from Tafilet. Other clans claim they descend from Persian families."
The M'zab region was an Iranian colony after the 9th century naturally they will have genetic links to Eurasia and Central Asia and to Africans (Berbers).
But don't confuse 700-1,100 years ago with 30,000 years ago or even 3,000 or less years ago when Eurasiatic Sea peoples were abosrbed into the ancestral Tehenou populations in eastern Libya.lol!
Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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^Keita suggests that the ancient Berbers may have something to teach us about peoples living together - referencing the pattern of some non-African females found among this ancient African male population.
"Frigi et al. (2010) suggest these possibilities as factors in their consideration of the asymmetric assimilation of females of non-African origin into Berber-speaking populations whose males currently have a predominance of lineages defined by the African M35/81 biallelic marker. It is interesting that these “non-African” mtDNA lineages are usually predominant while being diverse (Coudray et al. 2009; Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004; Khodjet-el-Khil et al. 2008). The existence of mtDNA lineages common to Saami and some Amazigh groups (Achilli et al. 2005) is likely to be explained by the migration of females bearing these lineages from a region in northern Europe (perhaps in the ranks of the Vandals or far more ancient back-migrations to Africa), whether they were ethnically Saami or not..."
and
"Frigi and colleagues may have inadvertently revealed peoples whose ancestors had a level of cultural flexibility in accepting outsiders as mates. As noted, the male and female histories of a population may be different in their sources (Wilkins 2006), although they are now seen as part of a recognizable biocultural entity with a categorically singular identity."
--Biocultural Emergence of the Amazigh in Africa: Comment on Frigi et al. (2010) S. O. Y. Keita. Human Biology (August 2010) (82:4)
^^ Hmmm, African males, European females... Not quite the picture white racists were expecting from DNA research..
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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I think I read this on Egyptsearch - "In NW African populations, an Upper Paleolithic colonization that probably had its origin in eastern Africa contributed 75% of the current gene pool. In comparison, 78% of contemporary Iberian Y chromosomes originated in an Upper Paleolithic expansion from western Asia, along the northern rim of the Mediterranean basin." AMerican Journal of Human Genetics 68:1019-1029.
I don't know who posted the above, but it says it all. Because of such conclusions I now have a lot more faith in genetics than I did 20 years ago when I read a paper stating modern Berber-speakers in the Mzab area were predominantly of Eurasiatic origins go back 25,000 years ago. Which it does - in Eurasia- Not in Africa.
Neverthe ess there are still some genetic researchers presumedly objective who are into "Caucasain" or "white" nationalism promoting their genetic version of Hamitic Caucasoid theory. It is the theory for which reason Diop and others began studying their own history and have cried foul.
As indicated by excerpts from the article below some "scientists" tout "Caucasians" (THEIR WORD) as being the probable root of Afro-Asiatic dialects in sub-Saharan and northern Africa. Believe it or not. lol!
The peer reviewed article which is a full blown version of Hamitic Caucasoid theory starts off with the premise that there is some attestation of Caucasians in North Africa almost 50,000 years ago. (I am assuming some black ones but you never know with people in some countries).
The article is entitled: "Mitochondrial DNA transit between West Asia and North Africa inferred from U6 phylogeography", authors are Nicole Maca-Meyer1 , Ana M González1 , José Pestano2 , Carlos Flores1 , José M Larruga1 and Vicente M Cabrera1
Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, SPAIN
Laboratorio de Genética, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gran Canaria, SPAIN
A short excerpt of it was posted by Spiral man but I am posting a longer portion of it here to show the problem with reliance on genetics at its present stage in the West. It also shows a Ph.D. in this line of work doesn't stand for much if it only means one has the ability to use big words.
The word "Caucasian" has been capitalized by me just to show the emphasis of the paper and its theory.
It begins -
“Attested presence of CAUCASIAN people in Northern Africa goes up to Paleolithic times. From the archaeological record it has been proposed that, as early as 45,000 years ago (ya), anatomically modern humans, most probably expanded the Aterian stone industry from the Maghrib into most of the Sahara [1]. More evolved skeletal remains indicate that 20,000 years later the Iberomaurusian makers, replaced the Aterian culture in the coastal Maghrib. Several hypothesis have been forwarded concerning the Iberomaurusian origin. They can be resumed in those which propose an arrival, from the East, either from the Near East or Eastern Africa, and those which point to west Mediterranean Europe, either from the Iberian Peninsula, across the Gibraltar Strait, or from Italy, via Sicily, as their most probable homeland [2]. Between 10,000 and 6,000 ya the Neolithic Capsian industry flourished farther inland. The historic penetration in the area of classical Mediterranean cultures, ending with the Islamic domination, supposed a strong cultural influx. However, it seems that the demic impact was not strong enough to modify the prehistoric genetic pool.
"Linguistic research suggests that the Afroasiatic phylum of languages COULD HAVE ORIGINATED AND EXTENDED WITH THESE CAUCASIANS, either from the Near East or Eastern Africa and that posterior developments of the Capsian Neolithic in the Maghrib might be related to the origin and dispersal of proto-Berber speaking people into the area [3]. Nowadays, the Berber speakers, scattered throughout Northwest Africa from the Atlantic to the Lybic desert and from the Mediterranean shores to the south of the Sahel, are considered the genuine descendants of those prehistoric colonizers. Some important issues are pending of resolution to clarify the past and present of the NORTH AFRICAN CAUCASIANS: To which extent the Neolithic waves substituted the Paleolithic recipients? Which is the most probable origin of these prehistoric occupants? Did they come from Europe, East Africa, Southwest Asia or are they a result of an "in situ" evolution? Is there a correspondence between the Afroasiatic diversification and the spread of CAUCASIANS? Recently, molecular genetic research on North African populations has contributed new data to test the major issues proposed on archaeological, anthropological and linguistic grounds. The studies based on uniparental genetic markers have been particularly informative. Both, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences [4,5], and Y-chromosome binary markers [6,7] detected specific North African haplotypes that confirm an ancient human colonization for this area and a sharp discontinuity between Northwest Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. From a mtDNA point of view, the most informative of these genetic markers is the North African clade U6. On the basis of complete mtDNA sequences, it has been proposed that U6 lineages, mainly found in North Africa, are the signatures of a return to Africa around 39,000–52,000 ya [8]. This stresses the importance of its detailed study in order to trace one of the earliest CAUCASIAN arrivals to Africa. Although in moderate frequencies, the geographic range of this clade extends from the Near East to the Canary Islands, along the Atlantic shores of Northwest Africa and from the Sahel belt, including Ethiopia, to the southern Mediterranean rim. Out of this area, U6 has only been spotted in the Iberian Peninsula [9-12], Sicily [13], in the north European Ashkenazic Jews [14], and in Ibero-America. The presence in the latter is, most probably, the result of the Spanish and Portuguese colonization [15,16]. ...."
"...The expansion of Caucasians in Africa has been correlated with the spread and diversification of Afroasiatic languages. There are different hypothesis to explain the Afroasiatic origin. For some, it would be the result of a Neolithic demic diffusion from the Near East to Africa [27,28]. For others, the Afroasiatic originated in Africa and had a posterior demic spread to West Asia [29,30]. A third possibility is that Afroasiatic languages spread mostly through cultural contacts either from Africa or from Asia [31]. Only demic diffusions could be correlated with U6 expansions detected here. Since an upper bound of 15,000 ya has been estimated for the proto-Afroasiatic origin, it seems that the coalescence age for U6a predates by far the origin of the Afroasiatic phylum. However, the recent spread of U6a1 is more in frame with the emergence of a proto-Afroasiatic language. This U6a1 expansion would favor an East African origin for the Afroasiatic and a posterior expansion to West Africa and West Asia. However, a Near Eastern origin, most probably predating the Neolithic expansion, cannot be ruled out."
Other parts of the paper read similarly all based on the premise that the Berbers and East Africans are a population for the most part represented to day by "Caucasians".
"The most probable origin of the proto-U6 lineage was the Near East. Around 30,000 years ago it spread to North Africa where it represents a signature of regional continuity. Subgroup U6a reflects the first African expansion from the Maghrib returning to the east in Paleolithic times. Derivative clade U6a1 signals a posterior movement from East Africa back to the Maghrib and the Near East. This migration coincides with the probable Afroasiatic linguistic expansion."
"U6b and U6c clades, restricted to West Africa, had more localized expansions. U6b probably reached the Iberian Peninsula during the Capsian diffusion in North Africa."
"Linguistic research suggests that the Afroasiatic phylum of languages could have originated and extended with these CAUCASIANS, either from the Near East or Eastern Africa and that posterior developments of the Capsian Neolithic in the Maghrib might be related to the origin and dispersal of proto-Berber speaking people into the area ...."
"From a mtDNA point of view, the most informative of these genetic markers is the North African clade U6. On the basis of complete mtDNA sequences, it has been proposed that U6 lineages, mainly found in North Africa, are the signatures of a return to Africa around 39,000–52,000 ya . This stresses the importance of its detailed study in order to trace one of the earliest CAUCASIAN arrivals to Africa...." Etc. Etc. Etc.
One reason why genetics is not the be all and end all on the origins of AFrican populations. Some people just can't get it right.
Anyone can feel free to comment if I am missing something or explain why white supremacists notions still flourish in genetic science outside of Africa.
Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by dana marniche: Anyone can feel free to comment if I am missing something or explain why white supremacists notions still flourish in genetic science outside of Africa.
You feel this way because you have not read the literature. If you read the literature you will find that nothing has changed in the academy's view of African and Black people.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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"From a mtDNA point of view, the most informative of these genetic markers is the North African clade U6. On the basis of complete mtDNA sequences, it has been proposed that U6 lineages, mainly found in North Africa, are the signatures of a return to Africa around 39,000–52,000 ya . This stresses the importance of its detailed study in order to trace one of the earliest CAUCASIAN arrivals to Africa...." Etc. Etc. Etc.
You are right Dana about some of the academy's inconsistency and outright hypocrisy on this score.
Said academy keeps changing the date of the so-called "return to Africa." Some claimants hold it is around 60-70kya but have been debunked since humans are not even supposed to have LEFT at that time. So how could they have "returned" when they ain't left yet?
They are also defeated by the fact that those early peoples looked like today's tropical Africans and hence are not "Caucasoid." They cynical racial spin game needs to be exposed time and time again, using their own data.
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As I have stated time and again, it is conceivable that U6's ultimate recent ancestor arrived from outside Africa, given that unlike the case in M1 --where M1's node emerges right from the basal M node, U6 is united with other haplogroup U clades via certain basal motifs but then the N node is separated from the U family via the R node. Being conceivable does not mean it is necessarily the actuality either, but just that it is plausible. It is a mystery whether U6's immediate common recent ancestor also originated in situ Africa or elsewhere, but there is little doubt the U6 itself emerged on the African continent.
From U6 distribution patterns, I observe two major migratory events out of Africa; one having occurred sometime in the Upper Paleolithic, which seems to have been accompanied by some dispersals of M1, starting from the western Saharan area, and then yet another one -- a later event, this time from eastern Africa, which too appears to have accompanied or else paralleled dispersals of M1 clades specific to eastern Africa. I go into details on several related blog posts. This provides the most logical explanation of the appearance of both western African-specific M1 and U6 and eastern African-specific sub-clades in the northern areas of the Arabian plate, but only western African-specific and eastern African-specific clades largely present in their respective western and eastern African areas. This last point is especially true for M1, where there is marked differentiation between western African examples and eastern African examples. A similar case occurs with U6, although here, some eastern-African sub-clades appear to have made their way back to western Africa in low frequencies. Naturally, the eastern African sub-clades are relatively late arrivals in western Africa, since they are more downstream than the Maghrebi/western African examples.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Because I don't care to. You know something that the rest of us normies don't, then share it. Otherwise, please be so kind as to put a cork in yo needlessly-yapping hole.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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