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Who were the Nataruk people? Mandibular morphology among late Pleistocene and early Holocene fisher-forager populations of West Turkana (Kenya). Mounier A, et al. J Hum Evol. 2018. Show full citation Abstract Africa is the birthplace of the species Homo sapiens, and Africans today are genetically more diverse than other populations of the world. However, the processes that underpinned the evolution of African populations remain largely obscure. Only a handful of late Pleistocene African fossils (∼50-12 Ka) are known, while the more numerous sites with human fossils of early Holocene age are patchily distributed. In particular, late Pleistocene and early Holocene human diversity in Eastern Africa remains little studied, precluding any analysis of the potential factors that shaped human diversity in the region, and more broadly throughout the continent. These periods include the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a moment of extreme aridity in Africa that caused the fragmentation of population ranges and localised extinctions, as well as the 'African Humid Period', a moment of abrupt climate change and enhanced connectivity throughout Africa. East Africa, with its range of environments, may have acted as a refugium during the LGM, and may have played a critical biogeographic role during the heterogene`ous environmental recovery that followed. This environmental context raises a number of questions about the relationships among early Holocene African populations, and about the role played by East Africa in shaping late hunter-gatherer biological diversity. Here, we describe eight mandibles from Nataruk, an early Holocene site (∼10 Ka) in West Turkana, offering the opportunity of exploring population diversity in Africa at the height of the 'African Humid Period'. We use 3D geometric morphometric techniques to analyze the phenotypic variation of a large mandibular sample. Our results show that (i) the Nataruk mandibles are most similar to other African hunter-fisher-gatherer populations, especially to the fossils from Lothagam, another West Turkana locality, and to other early Holocene fossils from the Central Rift Valley (Kenya); and (ii) a phylogenetic connection may have existed between these Eastern African populations and some Nile Valley and Maghrebian groups, who lived at a time when a Green Sahara may have allowed substantial contact, and potential gene flow, across a vast expanse of Northern and Eastern Africa.
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quote:a phylogenetic connection may have existed between these Eastern African populations and some Nile Valley and Maghrebian groups, who lived at a time when a Green Sahara may have allowed substantial contact, and potential gene flow, across a vast expanse of Northern and Eastern Africa.
It would be nice to know which North African populations were used in these comparisons. Also, they should totally try to extract some aDNA from these Nataruk remains soon.
quote:a phylogenetic connection may have existed between these Eastern African populations and some Nile Valley and Maghrebian groups, who lived at a time when a Green Sahara may have allowed substantial contact, and potential gene flow, across a vast expanse of Northern and Eastern Africa.
It would be nice to know which North African populations were used in these comparisons. Also, they should totally try to extract some aDNA from these Nataruk remains soon.
Its probably already extracted and they are sitting on it. This is from Marta Lahr @ Duckworth Labs. This was 2 years ago.
quote: Der Beyoku
Thank you for your question. In collaboration with Prof Eske Willerslev from GeoGenetics at Copenhagen, we are exploring the possibility of obtaining ancient genomes from the early Holocene hunter-gatherer skeletal remains that we have discovered through the In-Africa Project. At the moment, we are focusing on material from a range of sites, not just Nataruk, to test whether DNA is preserved in this material at all, and hopefully will have some results to publish next year
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Thanks for sharing. Loving the distance table, global sample selection and general on-pointness. It's more of a complete package than other recent papers of this type. Last one I can remember was limited in scope and not very impressive compared to this one.
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The position of the Badarian sample seems closer to the Bantu sample in the new paper, compared to Pinhasi's old 2003 mandible study (see pages and quote below).
quote:The results of the second part of the analysis are given in figures 10.14 and 10.15. In the first graph (fig. 10.14) the various means arc plotted together with the individual scores for Nazlet Khater, LSA, and MSA and North Africa Middle Palaeolithic specimens. Plot- ted on left part of the graph is the 950/0 confidence in- terval ellipse for the Badari population. While this el- lipse does not represent the uue 95 percent confidence limits for the actual population, it provides a good ap- proximation based on the available skeletal 'population' (60 individuals). The dotted line represents the separa- tion between North African (Egypt and the Maghreb) populations and Saharan and sub-Saharan populations (including the Nubian populations). Below the dotted line are most of the LSA, and sub-Saharan Iron age individuals, the MSA individuals, Nazlet Khater, and the mean scores for Prehistoric and Neolithic Saharan, as well as Nubian populations. The only exception is the mean score for actual North Africans, which falls below the line. Means for various Levantine and Mediterranean populations (Shanidar) are intermediate where some means are below the dotted line (Hatoula, Shanidar, Abu Gosh) while others are above it (Nahal Oren, Eyman). Remarkably, the graph pattern agrees with the geographical boundary of the Tropic of Cancer (Latitude 230 27'). Illus, if the dotted line represents the Tropic of Cancer, then all plotted means of prehis- toric African populations from a location south of the Tropic of Cancer fall below the line, while all prehis- toric African populations from a location North of the Tropic of Cancer fall above it.
The 3D morphometric results from the paper in the OP are interesting in that they add new info to this old 2003 picture painted by Pinhasi (as far as the Badarian sample). If this new paper added Pinhasi's African-looking Levantine samples, and studied them 3D morphometrically, it would be a wrap. They would definitely cluster with Africans. We already know that from the Pinhasi paper (see results above) and other papers. For instance:
quote:Abstract: A high degree of diversity noted in the Neolithic mandibles from Abu Hureyra provided the opportunity to address the problem of the meaning and origin of variability in the population. Mandible morphology is approached bearing in mind cranio-facial interactions. Two morphological patterns were identified in the Abu Hureyra mandible sample. e ABU morph represents the majority, while the ABO morph corresponds to a small group with a distinctive shape. In this preliminary study, variability of the mandibles was examined through bivariate analyses of the Abu Hureyra material and of five comparative samples. e ABU pattern has affinities with other populations of the Near East including Çatal Hüyük and Lachish as indicated by similarities of both ramus morphology and corpus robusticity, whilst the ABO pattern shows biologically significant resemblances to East African (Elmenteita) and North African Mesolithic (Afalou) as well as to Neolithic material from the Near East (Jericho). ese similarities suggest that there were migrations to the Near East from north and east Africa at the end of the Pleistocene.
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I got my hands on the full paper cited in the OP at last. On p. 14, they do indeed mention an apparent affinity between the Egyptian Badarians and sub-Saharan populations that recurs across their analyses. Egyptian Naqada and Kushite Kerma, on the other hand, appear closer to Afalou and Taforalt in prehistoric Northwest Africa. And of course there are the observations of affinity between ancient North Africans and the Nataruk people of Kenya which are the paper's true focus.
Could these Nataruk people be related to proto-Afrasans, I wonder?
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: I got my hands on the full paper cited in the OP at last. On p. 14, they do indeed mention an apparent affinity between the Egyptian Badarians and sub-Saharan populations that recurs across their analyses. Egyptian Naqada and Kushite Kerma, on the other hand, appear closer to Afalou and Taforalt in prehistoric Northwest Africa. And of course there are the observations of affinity between ancient North Africans and the Nataruk people of Kenya which are the paper's true focus.
Could these Nataruk people be related to proto-Afrasans, I wonder?
Imagine putting PAA at the southwest region of Ethiopia. reading between the lines of some of Daniel shriners work (genetics) I think Thats where he's putting it... People will have heart attacks if that where the case but judging by physical anthropology, that would make sense.
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