posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
Lets just say we need more aDNA. The problem right now is the current models of the ancient origins of certain DNA lineages are based primarily on remains and DNA samples from said remains which are primarily from Eurasia and far older than any remains that have been sampled in Africa.

Until we get samples from African remains in North Africa, the Nile valley and so forth between 30 and 50 KYA we will never know for certain that migrating Africans were not the basis of these lineages.

This is the only thing I see here. Not necessarily a conspiracy but a model that is based on a lot of speculation, assumptions, missing data and hypothetical models.

---

Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the origins and spread of Later Stone Age culture in ancient Morocco. However, the international study published in Science, has revealed the genetic profiles of ancient Moroccan remains and in doing so, details of their ancestry. The findings suggest that the bones have substantial Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African-related ancestries (63.5% and 36.5%, respectively).

As the oldest human DNA evidence discovered in Africa, to date, the findings provide genomic evidence of contacts between North Africa and the Near East, as well as areas south of the Sahara, suggesting that more people were migrating in and out of North Africa 15,000 years ago, than previously believed.

The team of international archaeologists, including researchers from Oxford University, Morocco and the Natural History Museum in London, found bones from more than 10 human skeletons inside Taforalt cave in eastern Morocco. The remains were then directly radiocarbon dated at Oxford and analysed for aDNA.

Long term excavations at the site, associated with the Later Sone Age (LSA) Ibermomaurusian culture, have been co-directed by one of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Nick Barton of Oxford’s School of Archaeology. The project was therefore also intended to investigate the origins of the LSA in North Africa and the ancient Moroccan people.

Also known as the Iberomaurusians, the research findings suggest that the inhabitants of Taforalt Cave mainly shared their ancestry with early peoples living in the northeast Africa (Libya and Egypt). They also imply that connection existed with the Near East (Natufian) peoples 15,000 years ago – long before previously thought.

However, in the absence of more ancient genomic data from Africa, it is not yet possible to predict where the core area of LSA expansion lay. Surprisingly, some of the oldest archaeologically dated LSA finds occur in Morocco and Algeria, and not as might be predicted by the genetics in areas further to the south or east.

Professor Nick Barton said: ‘The results of this study are intriguing and call for a re-think of ideas. The genetics are telling us one thing, but the archaeological dating is telling us another’.

Of this apparent evidence gap he added: ‘Clearly the only way this can be resolved is by finding further genomic data from human remains in each of these potential source areas’.

---

quote:

---

The Later Stone Age (or LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age.

The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it are up for debate. The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age is thought to have occurred first in eastern Africa between 50,000 and 39,000 years ago. It is also thought that Later Stone Age peoples and/or their technologies spread out of Africa over the next several thousand years.[1]

The terms "Early Stone Age", "Middle Stone Age" and "Later Stone Age" in the context of African archaeology are not to be confused with the terms Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, and Upper Paleolithic. They were introduced in the 1920s, as it became clear that the existing chronological system of Upper, Middle, and Lower Paleolithic was not a suitable correlate to the prehistoric past in Africa. Some scholars, however, continue to view these two chronologies as parallel, arguing that they both represent the development of behavioral modernity.[2]

---

Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by xyyman:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:
[Q] please lets not regress to the run of the mill & "All haplogroups are from Africa" ..isms please

Also Xyyman...

---

\\ https://s17.postimg.org/9fpm6kkhb/mt_DNA_Africa.jpg

Hervella et al
"The U6 haplogroup is the **only** sub-haplogroup within the U clade currently present in Africa,.."

BTW- You understand my point here? IT IS A LIE!!! ALL BRANCHES OF mtDNA U is found IN AFRICA!!! ALL of them. [/QB]

---

Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:
.. this is your last warning from me fam.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by xyyman:
ok! ok! I will cheat. I am not waiting one day.


What they have concluded is that the Natufians are indeed related to East Africans as they should be. But the Natufians did NOT bring farming into Europe. farming was brought into Europe by an entirely different population...albeit related to the Natufians.

tic! tic! tic!

---

Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:

@Djehuti can you give thoughts on the Halfan -> Oranian connections possibly being mediated via M78 ~17kya?

---

Sorry for the late response...

It used to be thought that the Halfan Culture of the Nile Valley was the progenitor or Oranian (Ibero-maurusian) Culture of the Maghreb but the earliest Oranian sites predate the Halfan culture by several millennia. Though I do recall some sites in the coastal Cyrenaica area of Libya (Dabban Culture?) which may hold potential being the true progenitors of the Oranian and thus be the missing link between the Maghreb and the Nile Valley. That is something I'll have to look up unless Swenet has some answers to that.

In regards to E-M78, there was no doubt a presence of that lineage among people of the Oranian including members of the parent lineage E-V68, but there could potentially be other African clades during that time period which we don't know about. Furthermore are the morphological differences between these E-M78 carriers.

In the sum, the results obtained further strengthen the results from previous analyses. The affinities between Nazlet Khater, MSA, and Khoisan and Khoisan related groups re-emerges. In addition it is possible to detect a separation between North African and sub-saharan populations, with the Neolithic Saharan population from Hasi el Abiod and the Egyptian Badarian group being closely affiliated with modern Negroid groups. Similarly, the Epipaleolithic populations from Site 117 and Wadi Halfa are also affiliated with sub-Saharan LSA, Iron Age and modern Negroid groups rather than with contemporaneous North African populations such as Taforalt and the Ibero-maurusian.---Pierre M. Vermeersch
'Palaeolithic quarrying sites in Upper and Middle Egypt'

We also have visual examples below from 2000 Joel Irish paper on Iberomaurusians:


Lateral views of three Late Pleistocene male crania showing alveolar prognathism in Jebel Sahaba 117-10 (top), but not in Taforalt XI-C1 (middle) or Afalou 3 (bottom).

Interestingly all three possess similar shaped neurocrania, especially the top (Jebel Sahaba) and middle (Taforalt) and the same top and middle have similarly shaped mandibles especially in regards to the ramus, though this is just a judgement based on eye alone. The point is even though E-M78 may have spread from the Nile Valley west to the Maghreb there was still a general distinction in morphotype.

Though Colin Groves had this to say:

Today the North African and Subsaharan genepools are separated by the Sahara arid zone, a wide sparsely populated region whose people are intermediate morphologically between “Caucasoid” and “Negroid”. While the late and terminal Pleistocene populations of northern Africa were noticeably more robust than their present-day descendants (as were those of Europe), like them they were differentiated into more northerly “Caucasoid” and more southerly “Negroid” morphologies. Yet the transition between these two geographic forms was much further north in the terminal Pleistocene than today; the terminal Pleistocene Nubians and the Asselar skull are as “Negroid” as are the modern Teita of Kenya; the intermediates today are the Dogon of Mali, but in the terminal Pleistocene the intermediates were the people of Afalou-bou-Rhummel in Algeria.
'The Terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa'
C.P. Groves, A. Thorne, Canberra

Also featuring Groves' Factor Analysis:


Factor 1= Robusticity
Factor 2= "Caucasoid"-"Negroid" contrast

By the way, do you have a copy of the full Loosdrecht paper I can get my hands on??

Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
It used to be thought that the Halfan Culture of the Nile Valley was the progenitor or Oranian (Ibero-maurusian) Culture of the Maghreb but the earliest Oranian sites predate the Halfan culture by several millennia. Though I do recall some sites in the coastal Cyrenaica area of Libya (Dabban Culture?) which may hold potential being the true progenitors of the Oranian and thus be the missing link between the Maghreb and the Nile Valley. That is something I'll have to look up unless Swenet has some answers to that.

---

Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

"[..] ....Throughout most of the eastern Sahara,
however, the Aterian appears to have replaced the Mousterian, though
the latter continued on in the Nile Valley adopting a few Aterian
traits - but not the tang - and a late form (Khormusan) gave place to
a diminutive or micro-Levallois tradition (Halfan) about 20000 years
ago."

-- On the Halfan Culture:

"Many of the stone tools are quite small and have been termed
microblades and microflakes; they are often removed from small
unprepared nuclei and have one edge blunted or 'backed' by what is
often called Ouchtata-like retouch. In addition there are small quantities
of burins and scrapers (fig. 5.5.7-14), a few bone tools, and perhaps
microburins. It is interesting to find this simple microblade technique
in the Nile Valley at this early date, apparently some millennia before
it appears in the Sahara or the Maghrib; it is not yet clear if it represents
an indigenous evolution from a highly specialized Levallois flake
technology or if it should be seen in terms of stimulus diffusion from
some other region."

-- On the Maurasians:

"[..] ...Whether or not there
was a hiatus in the occupation of the Maghrib after the Aterian, it
remains true that the first of the late Palaeolithic industries seems to
appear considerably later than in Cyrenaica though earlier than,
apparently, in Egypt or the Sahara. The earliest known date is about
20 000 BC for the Iberomaurusian of Algeria, at Tamar Hat. These late
Palaeolithic industries possess no stemmed points, no flat or invasive
retouch, practically never use the Levallois method of stone-working,
have very few side-scrapers, and are almost always based on blades and
bladelets. Two features appear in the Maghrib for the first time: the
microburin technique and Ouchtata retouch, although both were
known even earlier in the Nile Valley of Egypt. Thus there seems to
have been a sharp break in the lithic techniques and artifact forms, with
no good evidence for continuity from the local Mousterian or Aterian."

---

Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

The new radiocarbon ages for Tamar Hat are closely comparable
to the ages originally obtained by Saxon et al. (1974), but are more
reliable because they are on bone collagen which has fewer issues
with possible contamination. The calibrated ages indicate a time-
span of at least 5000 years for the LSA occupation, beginning near
the base at 25,845e25,270 cal BP and ending at around
20,122e19,632 cal BP. It is noticeable that the industry appears
‘suddenly’ and with no obvious antecedence. If the dates are taken
at face value they would imply that LSA microlithic assemblages
emerged in Algeria at least ~1.4 ka calibrated years earlier than their
first appearance in Morocco, which began ~22,292e21,825 cal BP at
Taforalt (Barton et al., 2013).

---

Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

"There is a high degree of similarity with phase 2 in the core-reduction procedures and in the use of soft hammer percussion but a strong divergence can be seen in the method of retouching bladelet tools fromthose in the phases above. There is no evidence of the microburin technique in the Lower Yellow Series. The distal ends of retouched bladelets are also rarely modified. Instead, the most common tool forms are obtuse-ended backed bladelets (Tixier’s type 67), with semi-abrupt or abrupt backing down one margin, and Ouchtata bladelets (Tixier’s type 70), which carry fine retouch down all or part of one edge (often the proximal portion). Pointed backed forms also occasionally occur (Fig. 5)."

[..]

"Turning to the Iberomaurusian, although the deposits at Taforalt represent a thick and fairly continuous record of human occupation, there are in fact subtle variations in the cultural sequence. The clearest example is the switch from IB1 with marginally backed (‘Ouchtata’) blades and bladelets to IB2 dominated by microlithic backed bladelets. The actual transition between the two phases is marked by a sharp sedimentary contact between Units Y2/Y1. This is clearly an erosive boundary so it is impossible to know whether the time gap of 857 years (between 15,686 - 15,010 BP and 17,204 - 16,898 BP at 2s) in the radiocarbon model is more apparent than real."

---

Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:
TBH, I'm not aware of Microburine industries in the near east that isn't (or is older than) Mushabian.

---

Posts: 660 | From: Canada | Registered: Mar 2017  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by capra:
Nebekian (~25-22 ka), then Nizzanian (20-18.5 ka), then Mushabian. Not that the microburin technique is rocket science anyway.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241685318_The_Levantine_Upper_Palaeolithic_and_Epipalaeolithic

---

Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:
perplexing, We have transition and gradual development in the Nile regime. But to the west west we have skeletons & older dates however, spontaneous industries. TBH, I'm not aware of Microburine industries in the near east that isn't (or is older than) Mushabian. But I'm prompted to subscribe to at least one pulse migration OOA and to the Maghreb (at least to the Taforalt) during the Early M78 days being responsible for these "sudden" industries.

---

Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:
do you believe Mushabian culture is an extension of Nizzanian or Nebekian culture? or are all these instances spontaneous...

---

Posts: 660 | From: Canada | Registered: Mar 2017  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:

quote:

---

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the origins and spread of Later Stone Age culture in ancient Morocco. However, the international study published in Science, has revealed the genetic profiles of ancient Moroccan remains and in doing so, details of their ancestry. The findings suggest that the bones have substantial Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African-related ancestries (63.5% and 36.5%, respectively).

As the oldest human DNA evidence discovered in Africa, to date, the findings provide genomic evidence of contacts between North Africa and the Near East, as well as areas south of the Sahara, suggesting that more people were migrating in and out of North Africa 15,000 years ago, than previously believed.

The team of international archaeologists, including researchers from Oxford University, Morocco and the Natural History Museum in London, found bones from more than 10 human skeletons inside Taforalt cave in eastern Morocco. The remains were then directly radiocarbon dated at Oxford and analysed for aDNA.

Long term excavations at the site, associated with the Later Sone Age (LSA) Ibermomaurusian culture, have been co-directed by one of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Nick Barton of Oxford’s School of Archaeology. The project was therefore also intended to investigate the origins of the LSA in North Africa and the ancient Moroccan people.

Also known as the Iberomaurusians, the research findings suggest that the inhabitants of Taforalt Cave mainly shared their ancestry with early peoples living in the northeast Africa (Libya and Egypt). They also imply that connection existed with the Near East (Natufian) peoples 15,000 years ago – long before previously thought.

However, in the absence of more ancient genomic data from Africa, it is not yet possible to predict where the core area of LSA expansion lay. Surprisingly, some of the oldest archaeologically dated LSA finds occur in Morocco and Algeria, and not as might be predicted by the genetics in areas further to the south or east.

Professor Nick Barton said: ‘The results of this study are intriguing and call for a re-think of ideas. The genetics are telling us one thing, but the archaeological dating is telling us another’.

Of this apparent evidence gap he added: ‘Clearly the only way this can be resolved is by finding further genomic data from human remains in each of these potential source areas’.

---

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-03-21-oldest-dna-africa-offers-clues-ancient-cultures

FYI:

quote:

---

The Later Stone Age (or LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age.

The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it are up for debate. The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age is thought to have occurred first in eastern Africa between 50,000 and 39,000 years ago. It is also thought that Later Stone Age peoples and/or their technologies spread out of Africa over the next several thousand years.[1]

The terms "Early Stone Age", "Middle Stone Age" and "Later Stone Age" in the context of African archaeology are not to be confused with the terms Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, and Upper Paleolithic. They were introduced in the 1920s, as it became clear that the existing chronological system of Upper, Middle, and Lower Paleolithic was not a suitable correlate to the prehistoric past in Africa. Some scholars, however, continue to view these two chronologies as parallel, arguing that they both represent the development of behavioral modernity.[2]

---

" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_Stone_Age[/QUOTE]

---

Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
As far as the origins of the LSA (note researchers trying to lie/play confused again in the bolded part). The second (wikipedia) excerpt is closer to the mark, although it is far more complex than what it says.

---

Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

The
earliest Middle Paleolithic or rather Middle Stone Age
industries of northeast Africa are the same that were made
in sub-Saharan Africa (Van Peer et al. 2003). The
unwarranted separation of Egypt from its heartland has been
an artefact of research traditions, fuelled perhaps by
Egyptocentric ideas emanating from Pharaonic archaeology
and anthropology.

---

Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elmaestro:
...Still going.

LD decay captures mixture dates going back to over ~300 generations which is an average of rough 9000 years.. the Taforalt samples are upto 15Kya... Math says that 24kyo admixture would be detected. which n respects to the date of the specimen is "recent" nonetheless admixture before 20,000 years ago would be detected.

The authors conclude that the SSA ancestry most probably represents continuity from MSA North Africans... Which was also discussed and mentioned on the previous page.

..Doug just concede.

---

Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by xyyman:
This European is on point......I would like to read the Ehret paper. It would be interesting. I thought he was a linguist. Did he gather all that from linguistics studies.

---

Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:



If you look at Pestera cu Oase also from Romania on this chart and older than PM1 (Pestera Muieri ) that is haplogroup N. That is ancestral to mtDNA R and R is ancestor to U.

U1 and U5 are older on this chart than U6

If you look at Pestera Muieri that was a woman also found in Romania who carried basal U6*

That haplogroup was formed before it split into
U6a U6b and U6c.

This particular woman was not an ancestor herself to other individuals of these U6 splits but she carried the older basal U6* lineage type.

So her age, 35K is not the age of the basal U6* (50k) she carried

Although the exact origin dates are estimates.
But so far that Romanian specimen is the oldest human remains found bearing U6

---

The schematic above is a unconstrained bayes algorithm. Do you know how ridiculous that is?


The part you forgot you post, I will post for you.

quote:

---

After the dispersal of modern humans Out of Africa, around 50–70 ky cal BP1,2,3,4 or earlier based on fossil evidence5, hominins with similar morphology to present-day humans appeared in the Western Eurasian fossil record around 45–40 ky cal BP, initiating the demographic transition from ancient human occupation [Neandertals] to modern human [Homo sapiens] expansion on to the continent"

[...]

The haplogroup of PM1 falls within the U clade [Fig. 1B and Supplementary Table 3], which derived from the macro-haplogroup N possibly connected to the Out of Africa migration around 60–70 ky cal BP1,2,3,4. In line with this, the Peştera cu Oase individual that lived on the current territory of Romania, albeit slightly earlier than PM1 [37–42 ky cal BP] also displays haplogroup N9.”

---

~Hervella et al. 2016

You and your countless back migrations.

Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oshun:
Didn't haplogroup U come from N? Wasn't N being said to have originated in Asia? descendants of Backmigrants that then mutated in Africa.

---

quote:

---

Results

The Saudi mtDNA profile confirms the absence of autochthonous mtDNA lineages in Arabia with coalescence ages deep enough to support population continuity in the region since the out-of-Africa episode.

[…]

Introduction

At the beginning of this century, studies based on mtDNA complete genomes [15–18] confirmed that only two mtDNA lineages (named M and N), sister branches of the African macro-haplogroup L3 lineages, embraced all the mtDNA variation that exists out of Africa.

Based on the phylogeography of M and N in Eurasia, it was proposed that M and N could respectively represent the maternal signals of both a southern and a northern route out of Africa [19].

[…]

For western Eurasian haplogroups we relied on recent reviews carried out by others: N1 [6,25–29], N2 [6,27–29], N3 [26,28–30], N5 [27,31], and X [6,26,27,32]. In addition, 553 Arabian samples previously published in Abu-Amero et al. [19]) were also included in our study.

[…]

Khor Angar (Djibouti) L3 Expected age (Kya) 70.8(52.7–88.1)

Damqawt (Yemen) N1a3a Expected age (Kya) 68.2(56.1–80.0)

---

quote:

---

Within the Soqotri samples, we identified haplotypes belonging to three of the main branches of the mtDNA phylogeny (macrohaplogroups L, N, and R); notably haplogroup M is absent (Table 2). There are only two sub-Saharan L haplotypes and they do not carry the 3594HpaI mutation so their classification is L3*; these haplotypes do not contain the specific mutations of L5b (23594HpaI) (Kivisild et al., 2004) and therefore they are possibly L3h2 as they both contain substitutions at 16111, 16184, and 16304 (see Behar et al., 2008). Macro-haplogroup N is represented by three different haplotypes of which only one can be unambiguously classified as N1a (it contains HVS-I motif 16147G-16172-16223-16248-16355). Two other N haplotypes have never been found outside Soqotra (see Table 2).

---

Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

The Taforalt individuals averaged 74.5% Northern African ancestry. By comparison, the Natufians had 61.2% Arabian, 21.2% Northern African, and 10.8% Western Asian ancestries. Thus, the Natufians and the Taforalt individuals share Northern African ancestry, although to a widely differing extent. Arabian and Northern African ancestries derived from a common ancestor 14,800 years ago based on decomposition of FST or 9,400 years ago based on msmc analysis. The latter time is relatively underestimated because of the presence of 12.8–15.8% Arabian ancestry in the Northern Africans. Thus, the people who migrated from east to west into Northern Africa ~22,000 years ago did not have Northern African ancestry per se but rather had this common ancestral ancestry. Implications are that (1) Natufians did not descend from Iberomaurusians; (2) Iberomaurusians did not descend from Natufians; (3) Northern African ancestry emerged on the African continent; (4) Iberomaurusians are genetically continuous with present-day Amazighen or Berbers (11); and (5) the genetic history of the Natufians includes individuals with Northern African ancestry that migrated west to east, ultimately departing Africa and arriving in the Levant.

---

quote:

---

The Taforalt individuals averaged 22.5% sub-Saharan African ancestry, reflecting a composite of 12.0% Western African, 7.1% Omotic, and 3.4% Eastern African ancestry.

---

Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

RE: "Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations"

Daniel Shriner, Staff Scientist, National Human Genome Research Institute


(25 June 2018)


(1). van de Loosdrecht et al. (2) generated genome-wide data from nine individuals from Grotte des Pigeons near Taforalt. The specimens were dated to 15,100–13,900 Cal BP and have been associated with the Iberomaurusian culture, which is known from sites ranging from Morocco to Tunisia along the Mediterranean coast. The matrilines included six U6 lineages and one M1 lineage, whereas the patrilines were exclusively E1b1b. The authors claimed that “three major components that comprise the Taforalt genomes are maximized in early Holocene Levantines, East African hunter-gatherer Hadza from north-central Tanzania, and West Africans.” The authors contextualized their findings based on the absence of sub-Saharan ancestry in Natufians (3). To the contrary, reanalysis of Natufians using a more ancestrally diverse reference panel (4) revealed 6.8% sub-Saharan ancestry, shared with present-day Omotic speakers in southern Ethiopia (5). Given that this ancestry was not covered by the global reference data set used by the authors, I reanalyzed the Taforalt data.

The Taforalt individuals averaged 22.5% sub-Saharan African ancestry, reflecting a composite of 12.0% Western African, 7.1% Omotic, and 3.4% Eastern African ancestry. van de Loosdrecht et al. (2) reported that modern West Africans, such as Mandenka, Esan, Mende, and Yoruba, were most strongly related to the sub-Saharan African component


The Taforalt individuals averaged 74.5% Northern African ancestry. By comparison, the Natufians had 61.2% Arabian, 21.2% Northern African, and 10.8% Western Asian ancestries. Thus, the Natufians and the Taforalt individuals share Northern African ancestry, although to a widely differing extent. Arabian and Northern African ancestries derived from a common ancestor 14,800 years ago based on decomposition of FST or 9,400 years ago based on msmc analysis. The latter time is relatively underestimated because of the presence of 12.8–15.8% Arabian ancestry in the Northern Africans. Thus, the people who migrated from east to west into Northern Africa ~22,000 years ago did not have Northern African ancestry per se but rather had this common ancestral ancestry.

Implications are that

(1) Natufians did not descend from Iberomaurusians;

(2) Iberomaurusians did not descend from Natufians;

(3) Northern African ancestry emerged on the African continent;

(4) Iberomaurusians are genetically continuous with present-day Amazighen or Berbers (11); and

(5) the genetic history of the Natufians includes individuals with Northern African ancestry that migrated west to east, ultimately departing Africa and arriving in the Levant. 

---

Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

RE: "Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations"


Questions on the Origins of the Iberomaurusians

Anonymous Reviewer

(26 April 2018)


On the first of these questions this critique will ask whether the researchers may not have fully taken into account one of their own test results, and on the second it will investigate some uncertainties of demographic modeling.

The potential evidence for European ancestry is found in Supplementary Materials Fig. S19(B), where the qpGraph diagram shows the Natufians as 37% WHG-like and 63% Basal Eurasian-like. Taforalt is then 70% Natufian-like and 30% sub-Saharan-like, which calculates to 26% WHG-like. These data are supported by Lazaridis et al. (2016) [1], who report an even larger WHG-like component of 47% for the Natufians in their Fig. S4.11.

It should be noted that Fig. S19(B) does not give information on whether the Iberomaurusians descend from the Natufians or vice versa. The branching node above the "Natufian" oval can be either "Pre-Natufian" or "Early Iberomaurusian".

To the contrary the ADMIXTURE results in Figs. 2B and S11 show no WHG component in Natufian or Taforalt. But ADMIXTURE can be idiosyncratic depending on the particulars of population histories and weighting of samples [2]. The researchers also conduct tests of possible "three-way" ancestry for Taforalt (Supplementary Materials S8). By this they mean a unitary Natufian source, a sub-Saharan source, and a separate and additional ancient European source. The qpAdm results slightly favor models with an additional European source, however they are rejected as being less parsimonious and having higher error estimates. The qpGraph tests consistently find a 0% additional European source. But this entire approach seems unreliable, and the ambiguous qpAdm results make sense, if Natufian is itself actually 37% WHG-like — as is still illustrated in the Fig. S19(C-E) qpGraph diagrams, presented to show the 0% "additional" WHG-like input to Taforalt.

If the WHG-like ancestry as shown in Fig. S19 is tentatively accepted, there are several basic models that can be formulated for how it reaches the Iberomaurusians.

1) It could be native to the Levant, or arrive there from the Bohunician, and expand to Libya with the Dabban.


2) It could be an Epigravettian migration to North Africa via Gibraltar/Sicily establishing the Iberomaurusians, and expand by 15kya to the Levant (without the sub-Saharan-like admixture).

3) It could be an Epigravettian migration to the Levant via Anatolia, and expand to North Africa for the Iberomaurusian.

4) It could be separate migrations to North Africa via Gibraltar/Sicily by 25kya, and to the Levant via Anatolia by 15kya, with similar admixture ratios (noting that Iran Neolithic has a similar 40% EHG).

Each model has its problems, and more complex scenarios are possible.


[b] As to the sub-Saharan-like DNA in Taforalt, the study seems to assume that it must come from geographical sub-Saharan Africans. An alternative which might be available is the indigenous Aterians of North Africa.


If instead the Basal Eurasian-like DNA is native to Southwest Asia or the Nile (other options in the main paper, loc. cit.), the sub-Saharan-like DNA can plausibly be either Aterian or sub-Saharan. The Aterians are the more obvious first choice, available as a substratum in the Iberomaurusian core territory. The hyperarid Sahara of the LGM, impeding contact with the sub-Saharan region, may add to this argument depending on other chronology.

The Aterians could also in theory have both the Basal Eurasian-like and sub-Saharan-like signals as their inherent DNA. They would be a western variant of the pre-ROA population, which does not go through the ROA bottleneck.


A complicating factor is that the signals detected in Taforalt could be skewed by any unmodeled migrations into sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, Iberomaurusian descendants as the Cushitics are now a tempting source of some of the "Levantine" DNA that appears in the Horn of Africa c. 1000 BC and filters to the Khoisan. Skoglund et al. (2017) report a revolutionary two-source formation of West Africans, with an archaic Homo sapiens component, and one "most closely related to eastern Africans and non-Africans" [11].

The present study has characterized its Taforalt specimens as non-European and a third sub-Saharan. There is some evidence that they could instead be a quarter European and a third North African. It is proposed here that these questions should remain open for further investigation.

---

Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6388/548/tab-e-letters

(excerpt)[QUOTE]"The authors contextualized their findings based on the absence of sub-Saharan ancestry in Natufians (3). To the contrary, reanalysis of Natufians using a more ancestrally diverse reference panel (4) revealed 6.8% sub-Saharan ancestry, shared with present-day Omotic speakers in southern Ethiopia (5). Given that this ancestry was not covered by the global reference data set used by the authors...."

---

Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6388/548/tab-e-letters

(excerpt, numbers added to listing)

quote:

---

RE: "Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations"


Questions on the Origins of the Iberomaurusians

Anonymous Reviewer

(26 April 2018)


On the first of these questions this critique will ask whether the researchers may not have fully taken into account one of their own test results, and on the second it will investigate some uncertainties of demographic modeling.

The potential evidence for European ancestry is found in Supplementary Materials Fig. S19(B), where the qpGraph diagram shows the Natufians as 37% WHG-like and 63% Basal Eurasian-like. Taforalt is then 70% Natufian-like and 30% sub-Saharan-like, which calculates to 26% WHG-like. These data are supported by Lazaridis et al. (2016) [1], who report an even larger WHG-like component of 47% for the Natufians in their Fig. S4.11.

It should be noted that Fig. S19(B) does not give information on whether the Iberomaurusians descend from the Natufians or vice versa. The branching node above the "Natufian" oval can be either "Pre-Natufian" or "Early Iberomaurusian".

To the contrary the ADMIXTURE results in Figs. 2B and S11 show no WHG component in Natufian or Taforalt. But ADMIXTURE can be idiosyncratic depending on the particulars of population histories and weighting of samples [2]. The researchers also conduct tests of possible "three-way" ancestry for Taforalt (Supplementary Materials S8). By this they mean a unitary Natufian source, a sub-Saharan source, and a separate and additional ancient European source. The qpAdm results slightly favor models with an additional European source, however they are rejected as being less parsimonious and having higher error estimates. The qpGraph tests consistently find a 0% additional European source. But this entire approach seems unreliable, and the ambiguous qpAdm results make sense, if Natufian is itself actually 37% WHG-like — as is still illustrated in the Fig. S19(C-E) qpGraph diagrams, presented to show the 0% "additional" WHG-like input to Taforalt.

If the WHG-like ancestry as shown in Fig. S19 is tentatively accepted, there are several basic models that can be formulated for how it reaches the Iberomaurusians.

1) It could be native to the Levant, or arrive there from the Bohunician, and expand to Libya with the Dabban.


2) It could be an Epigravettian migration to North Africa via Gibraltar/Sicily establishing the Iberomaurusians, and expand by 15kya to the Levant (without the sub-Saharan-like admixture).

3) It could be an Epigravettian migration to the Levant via Anatolia, and expand to North Africa for the Iberomaurusian.

4) It could be separate migrations to North Africa via Gibraltar/Sicily by 25kya, and to the Levant via Anatolia by 15kya, with similar admixture ratios (noting that Iran Neolithic has a similar 40% EHG).

Each model has its problems, and more complex scenarios are possible.


[b] As to the sub-Saharan-like DNA in Taforalt, the study seems to assume that it must come from geographical sub-Saharan Africans. An alternative which might be available is the indigenous Aterians of North Africa.


If instead the Basal Eurasian-like DNA is native to Southwest Asia or the Nile (other options in the main paper, loc. cit.), the sub-Saharan-like DNA can plausibly be either Aterian or sub-Saharan. The Aterians are the more obvious first choice, available as a substratum in the Iberomaurusian core territory. The hyperarid Sahara of the LGM, impeding contact with the sub-Saharan region, may add to this argument depending on other chronology.

The Aterians could also in theory have both the Basal Eurasian-like and sub-Saharan-like signals as their inherent DNA. They would be a western variant of the pre-ROA population, which does not go through the ROA bottleneck.


A complicating factor is that the signals detected in Taforalt could be skewed by any unmodeled migrations into sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, Iberomaurusian descendants as the Cushitics are now a tempting source of some of the "Levantine" DNA that appears in the Horn of Africa c. 1000 BC and filters to the Khoisan. Skoglund et al. (2017) report a revolutionary two-source formation of West Africans, with an archaic Homo sapiens component, and one "most closely related to eastern Africans and non-Africans" [11].

The present study has characterized its Taforalt specimens as non-European and a third sub-Saharan. There is some evidence that they could instead be a quarter European and a third North African. It is proposed here that these questions should remain open for further investigation.

---

---

Daniel Shriner seems to have a problem with sub-Saharan expansions. Disdain?

Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010  |  IP: Logged |