Figure 1. Results of the ADMIXTURE analysis (k = 4) with North African populations.
ADMIXTURE was performed on a set of European, North African, Near Eastern and Sub-Saharan populations in order to account for the different admixture proportions in North Africa. Tunisians and Saharawi are the North African populations with highest proportion of autochthonous component, whereas the rest of the populations have greater amounts of admixture with neighboring populations. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047765.g001
Table 2. Estimates of Neandertal ancestry in North African populations, along with European, Asian and Sub-Saharan African groups. show more doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047765.t002
Figure 3. Neandertal genetic introgression in North African populations as a fraction of that found in Europeans. show more Relative proportion of Neandertal ancestry for each population is presented as the dark blue section of the pies on a map of North Africa. Additionally, each population is also represented as a barplot of the different geographic genetic components; in red: North African, in blue: Sub-Saharan, in green: European, in yellow: Near East. Populations are shown as having Neandertal ancestry if the estimates are more than two standard errors from zero. Full name descriptions of these population labels are found in Table 2. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047765.g003
North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, Laura R. Botigué equal contributor, Sergi Civit, Conxita Arenas, María C. Ávila-Arcos, Carlos D. Bustamante, David Comas Carles Lalueza-Fox
Abstract
One of the main findings derived from the analysis of the Neandertal genome was the evidence for admixture between Neandertals and non-African modern humans. An alternative scenario is that the ancestral population of non-Africans was closer to Neandertals than to Africans because of ancient population substructure. Thus, the study of North African populations is crucial for testing both hypotheses. We analyzed a total of 780,000 SNPs in 125 individuals representing seven different North African locations and searched for their ancestral/derived state in comparison to different human populations and Neandertals. We found that North African populations have a significant excess of derived alleles shared with Neandertals, when compared to sub-Saharan Africans. This excess is similar to that found in non-African humans, a fact that can be interpreted as a sign of Neandertal admixture. Furthermore, the Neandertal's genetic signal is higher in populations with a local, pre-Neolithic North African ancestry. Therefore, the detected ancient admixture is not due to recent Near Eastern or European migrations. Sub-Saharan populations are the only ones not affected by the admixture event with Neandertals.
Introduction
Probably the most striking finding derived from the Neandertal genome project [1] was the evidence for admixture between Neandertals and a population of modern humans that left Africa between 80 Kya and 50 Kya subsequently expanding into the rest of the world. The study involved the sequencing and comparison of the Neandertal genome to five modern human genomes: two African (Yoruba and San) and three non-Africans (French, Chinese and Melanesian); all the non-African human genomes shared with Neandertals between 1–4% of their genome, in regions of low recombination placed along ten chromosomes [1]. Additional genomic region introgressions from Neandertals, Denisovans and also putative archaic African hominins have been recently described in Eurasian, Oceanic and even African populations, respectively [2]–[7].
However, an alternative scenario in which the ancestral population of today non-Africans was more closely related to Neandertals than the ancestral population of current Africans due to ancient substructure within the African continent, cannot be totally excluded with the present data [8], although it seems unlikely [9]. In light of this, it is unfortunate that North African individuals have not been included in these admixture analyses, since both the putative African substructure and the admixture are likely to differentially affect North African and sub-Saharan African populations.
The importance of North Africa in the emergence of modern Homo sapiens has been traditionally neglected. However, recent archaeological and paleontological evidence increasingly points to this area as a potential source of out-of-Africa migrations [10],[11]. Recent dating of the characteristic North African lithic industry, called Aterian, has provided much older dates than previously assumed, now ranging from 145 Kya to 40 Kya [12],[13]. These Aterian people made personal ornaments with shells, a sign of modern human symbolic behavior [14]. Morphometric analyses of the 80 Kya Dar es-Soltan skull (Morocco) and of Aterian hominin teeth show similarities with early modern humans from Qafzeh and Skhul (Israel) and with the later skull of Pestera cu Oase (Romania) [15],[16].
Recent genetic analysis of North African populations [17] have found that, despite the complex admixture genetic background, there is an autochthonous genomic component which is likely derived from “back-to-Africa” gene flow older than 12,000 years ago (ya) (i.e., prior to the Neolithic migrations). This local population substratum seems to represent a genetic discontinuity with the earliest modern human settlers of North Africa (those with the Aterian industry) given the estimated ancestry is younger than 40,000 years ago [17]. The estimated time of Neandertal admixture with modern human populations is between 37,000–86,000 years ago [18].
The aim of this work was to investigate if this autochthonous North African ancestry bares any traces of the introgression with Neandertals, by applying the f4 ancestry ratio statistic test, previously used to detect Denisovan admixture in Asia [3]. We show that North African populations, like all non-African humans [1], also carry the signature of admixture with Neandertals, and that the real geographical limit for Neandertal admixture is between sub-Saharan groups and the rest.
Materials and Methods
To ascertain whether or not current North African populations show any signs of Neandertal admixture, we analyzed recently published data of 125 North African individuals genotyped with the Affymetrix 6.0 chip and accounting for 780,000 SNPs were analyzed [17]. Individuals are representative of seven different North African locations (Table 1) spanning from west to east. To have a broader coverage of Eurasia and to allow comparison with Sub-Saharan populations, African and Eurasian populations were included in the analysis [1
In order to compare the human SNP data to the Neandertal, bam read files from all Neandertal samples from the UCSC ftp site (ftp://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/gbdb/hg18/neandertal/seqAlis) were downloaded and merged. Base and mapping quality filters reported in previous studies were implemented in the analysis [2],[21]. To avoid any confusion with ancient DNA postmortem modifications, C-T and G-A human – ancient hominin nucleotide sites, were discarded. For all sequencing data, a single read was randomly sampled for each individual at positions overlapping the array SNPs coordinates. Furthermore all human and Neandertal data were merged with sequence data from chimpanzee (CGSC 2.1/Pantro), and data were further processed to control for strand misidentification [3], to conform a final data set of 142,720 SNPs.
North African populations have a complex genetic background. In addition to an autochthonous genetic component, they exhibit signals of European, sub-Saharan and Near Eastern admixture as previously described [17]. Moreover, the use of genotype data can suffer from potential biases that arise from discovering SNPs in a limited number of individuals, thus resulting in enrichment of common alleles, particularly in the populations from which the discovery panel was constructed [22],[23] (in the present case would be a bias towards European populations). Two challenges arise from these effects: first, patterns of gene flow detected between Neandertal and North Africans could be the consequence of subsequent admixture between North Africans and other modern human populations and second, the ascertainment bias towards European and East Asian populations could magnify differences in signals of Neandertal gene flow in individuals with high Sub-Saharan ancestry compared to individuals with high European ancestry.
In order to overcome these problems we initially assessed the different genetic components in North African populations using an unsupervised clustering algorithm, ADMIXTURE [24], on a sample set of around 50,000 SNPs that included all North African individuals, together with populations of European, Near Eastern and Sub-Saharan origin [17],[25],[26].
As a first approach to establish the relationship between North African populations and Neandertal, a projected Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was performed. In addition to the chimpanzee and the Neandertal genomes, data from the Denisova genome were downloaded and merged in this case resulting in 111,991 SNPs (after filtering for strand bias SNPs and ancient DNA miscoding lesions). Given that the ancient hominin and chimpanzee genomes have been originally sequenced at low coverage no SNP polymorphism data are available, and therefore individuals were considered at the haplotype level only. First, a PCA was generated using Neandertal, chimpanzee, and Denisova. Then, SNP loadings for the first two components were used to project the sample set of modern humans.
Next, we aimed at estimating the amount of Neandertal admixture in North African populations using the f4 ancestry ratio test [27]. Although a previous simulation study [28] suggested that the analysis of SNP data from arrays can provide biased results in admixture estimates, there is more recent evidence supporting that f4 ancestry ratio statistic is unaffected by those biases [3]. The f4 ancestry ratio test measures the proportion of archaic hominin genetic fraction in a modern human population as a fraction of the known amount of archaic introgression in another modern human population. Consequently, the f4 ancestry ratio test basically measures the correlation in allele frequency differences between two populations used as outgroups (e.g., chimpanzee and Neandertal), a Sub-Saharan African population (Yorubans) and the X-tested population, normalized by the correlation in allele frequency differences between chimpanzee, Neandertal, a Sub-Saharan African group (Yorubans) and a human population previously known to have experienced Neandertal admixture (in this case, CEU) [1]. If Yorubans and X descend from a single ancestral population without any subsequent admixture with Neandertals, then the allele frequency differences between Yorubans and X must have arisen solely after their separation from their common ancestor; the two frequency differences should be uncorrelated and thus the f4 ancestry ratio statistic should have an expected value of zero.
Finally, a block jackknife [29],[30] approach was used to estimate standard errors; blocks were separated by dropping each non-overlapping five cM stretch of the genome in turn, and studying the variance of each statistic of interest to obtain a approximately normal distributed standard error [25]. Further combinations (e.g. San instead of Yoruban and Chinese instead of CEU) were also calculated to test the consistency of the results (Table S1).
Results and Discussion
We ran ADMIXTURE for k equal 2 to 7 and obtained CV errors, and determined that the best k (the one with lowest cross-validation error) is k = 4. Results (Figure 1) are coincident with those previously published [17] and show that North Morocco, Libya and Egypt carry high proportions of European and Near Eastern ancestral components, whereas Tunisian Berbers and Saharawi are those populations with highest autochthonous North African component. Particularly, ten Tunisian individuals have more than 99% of their genome assigned to North African ancestry and therefore have been analyzed separately (subsequently referred to as N-TUN) from the overall Tunisian population.
In the PCA analysis (Figure 2) Eurasian populations are the closest to Neandertals among modern humans, which is in agreement with previous studies [1]. Sub-Saharan Africans are, as expected, more distant to Neandertal, whereas North African individuals are placed between these two groups. North African individuals with the highest Sub-Saharan African component (as detected by ADMIXTURE) are distant from Neandertal and closer to Sub-Saharan populations. It is interesting to notice that the North African populations closer to Neandertals are populations with a large known European or Near Eastern admixture, but also the Tunisians that have an almost complete autochthonous North African genetic component.
The results of the f4 ancestry ratio test (Table 2 and Table S1) show that North African populations vary in the percentage of Neandertal inferred admixture, primarily depending on the amount of European or Near Eastern ancestry they present (Table 1). Populations like North Morocco and Egypt, with the highest European and Near Eastern component (~40%), have also the highest amount of Neandertal ancestry (~60–70%) (Figure 3). On the contrary, South Morocco that exhibits the highest Sub-Saharan component (~60%), shows the lowest Neandertal signal (20%). Interestingly, the analysis of the Tunisian and N-TUN populations shows a higher Neandertal ancestry component than any other North African population and at least the same (or even higher) as other Eurasian populations (100–138%) (Figure 3).
Some results of the estimated ancestry in Table 2 are higher than 100%. Because the amount of Neandertal admixture provided by this statistic is in relation to the fraction found in another population, populations with more than 100% values, have more than the observed Neandertal admixture levels found in the “source population” used for comparison (i.e CEU). On the other hand, a negative f4 ancestry ratio value such as that one observed for the Luyha in Table 2 could have several explanations. One possibility is that it reflects an artifact of ascertainment bias on SNP arrays. Ascertainment bias is likely to affect the joint information from Europeans and East Asians, since SNP arrays are most commonly designed based on information from these populations. On the other hand it could also reflect a more complex demographic history (i.e population structure between the populations being compared) than previously assumed.
Subsequently, we aimed to compare the results revealed by ADMIXTURE and by the f4 ancestry ratio statistic in an attempt to corroborate that the signal of Neandertal admixture revealed in North African populations is not caused by Eurasian admixture. For this purpose, we performed a Pearson correlation test between the ancestry proportions estimated with ADMIXTURE and the proportions of Neandertal admixture estimated by the f4 ancestry ratio test. Specifically, we tested the correlation between a) both European and Near Eastern components and Neandertal admixture and b) European, Near Eastern and North African admixture components and Neandertal admixture. If signals of gene flow from Neandertals were due exclusively to the European and the Near Eastern components, we would expect that the correlation should significantly decrease in test b), when the North African component is included. On the contrary, the Pearson correlation test reaches significance only when the North African component is included, which is maintained even when Tunisians are removed from the analysis (Table 3).
Overall, the correlation analysis and the f4 ancestry ratio statistic show that the North African component actually contributes to the signal of gene flow from Neandertals. Given that the North African autochthonous ancestry seems to be 12,000–40,000 years old [17], our hypothesis is that this ancestral population was descendant from the populations that first interbreed with Neandertals about ~37,000–86,000 years ago [18] somewhere in the Middle East. Nonetheless further analyses in populations around the contact areas are needed to confirm this hypothesis.
A previous study [26] observed that the similarity to Neandertals increases with distance from Africa and suggested this could be explained by SNP ascertainment bias plus a strong genetic drift in East Asian populations. Nonetheless more complex, population-biased, ascertainment schemes might have additional effects (i.e bottlenecks), but these are not expected to significantly increase the rate of false positives in admixture tests [31]. The Tunisian population has been reported to be a genetic isolate [17] so it is plausible that part of the signal detected is actually due to genetic drift. However, this should not affect the other North African groups in our study. Finally, given that SNP arrays are based on common alleles and probably the relevant admixture information is encoded within the rare and very rare alleles, the potential bias, if anything, will underestimate ancient hominid admixture signals, as shown in previous studies [2],[3].
With the current data, however, it is not possible to discard the ancient African substructure hypothesis [8]. Although ours and some previous results [9] tend to favor the admixture hypothesis as the most plausible one, we think that a complete clarification of this issue can only be achieved with a Neandertal high coverage genome, such as this recently achieved for Denisova [32]. This, and sequencing data of North African populations, especially those with a high autochthonous component, may help elucidate more precisely the interbreeding process with Neandertals. In any case, our results show that Neandertal genomic traces do not mark a division between African and non-Africans but rather a division between Sub-Saharan Africans and the rest of modern human groups, including those from North Africa.
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This is the billionth time you're posting this.
quote: Recent genetic analysis of North African populations [17] have found that, despite the complex admixture genetic background, there is an autochthonous genomic component which is likely derived from “back-to-Africa” gene flow older than 12,000 years ago (ya) (i.e., prior to the Neolithic migrations). This local population substratum seems to represent a genetic discontinuity with the earliest modern human settlers of North Africa (those with the Aterian industry) given the estimated ancestry is younger than 40,000 years ago [17]. The estimated time of Neandertal admixture with modern human populations is between 37,000–86,000 years ago [18].
Figure 3. Neandertal genetic introgression in North African populations as a fraction of that found in Europeans.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
code:
frac·tion (frkshn) n. 1. Mathematics An expression that indicates the quotient of two quantities, such as 1/3 . 2. A disconnected piece; a fragment. 3. A small part; a bit: moved a fraction of a step.
[...]
1. a. a number usu. expressed in the form a/b. b. a ratio of algebraic quantities similarly expressed. 2. a component in a volatile mixture whose range of boiling point temperatures allows it to be separated from other components by fractionation. 3. a part of a whole: Only a fraction of the members were present. 4. a small part or segment: only a fraction of the cost. 5. a piece broken off; fragment. v.t., v.i. 6. to break into fractions. [1350–1400; Middle English fraccioun < Late Latin frāctiō act of breaking]
quote: Overall, the correlation analysis and the f4 ancestry ratio statistic show that the North African component actually contributes to the signal of gene flow from Neandertals. Given that the North African autochthonous ancestry seems to be 12,000–40,000 years old [17], our hypothesis is that this ancestral population was descendant from the populations that first interbreed with Neandertals about ~37,000–86,000 years ago [18] somewhere in the Middle East. Nonetheless further analyses in populations around the contact areas are needed to confirm this hypothesis.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
Lets review something here, shall we.
African Archaeological Review
John E. Yellen National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230
Abstract Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes. They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates. The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African “tradition.”They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries.
And more recent sources:
Volume 300, 25 June 2013, Pages 153–170
The Middle Palaeolithic in the Desert
The Middle Stone Age of the Central Sahara: Biogeographical opportunities and technological strategies in later human evolution
quote:Therefore, the detected ancient admixture is not due to recent Near Eastern or European migrations. Sub-Saharan populations are the only ones not affected by the admixture event with Neandertals.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
quote: ..."it is important to bear in mind that over the centuries the Maghreb has been a melting-pot of many other ethnic groups and cultures"
--A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period, By Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, Cambridge University Press, 1987 - page 5.
quote: 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).
--Frigi et al. Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations
quote:
Rif Region The beautiful Rif is a mountain range that extends from Tangier in the west to the Moulouya River in the east and the Mediterranean sea in the north to the river of Ouargha in the south. The mountain region derives its name from the Berber word, arif. They belong to the Alboran Sea region but are not a part of the Atlas Mountains. The region is well known for its geographic diversity, as it is home to mountains, the sea, rivers, and hills. Major cities in the region are Nador, Al Hoceima, Ajdir and Taza, among others.
The Rif was initially inhabited by the Berbers and was later invaded by the Phoenicians in the 3rd century BC, followed by the Romans and the Byzantines. The high plateau of Eastern Morocco: In the rain shadow region of the Atlas chain lies the broad valley of Moulouya. It stretches for about 530 kms rights from the Middle Atlas and goes right up to the Mediterranean Sea. Set to the southeast of the Atlas Mountains, this is a plateau formation at an altitude of 1300m (3900 feet). It stretches in the eastern direction to the Moroccan-Algerian border. It abruptly drops to the southwest and make a smoother transition toward the coastline. There are different small towns like Asni, Tin Mal that you can check out. The artificial lake Lalla Takerkoust created due the hydroelectric dam serves as a good source for the villages around it.
quote: Therefore, the detected ancient admixture is not due to recent Near Eastern or European migrations. Sub-Saharan populations are the only ones not affected by the admixture event with Neandertals.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
quote: ..."it is important to bear in mind that over the centuries the Maghreb has been a melting-pot of many other ethnic groups and cultures"
--A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period, By Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, Cambridge University Press, 1987 - page 5.
Sand dunes and hills, the way they are shaped etc... are the true markers to Tuareg, Fula etc...
Older source,
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 124–142 (1998) Article no. AA980320
Early African Pastoralism: View from Dakhleh Oasis (South Central Egypt)
Mary M. A. McDonald
The late prehistoric archaeological sequence from Dakhleh Oasis, South Central Egypt, is examined for evidence on the origins and development of pastoralism in northeastern Africa, under the dry but fluctuating environmental conditions of the early to mid-Holocene. Around 8800 B.P., relatively sedentary groups of the Masara cultural unit have a broad-based
subsistence
system but no sign of food production. Herding appears ca. 7000 B.P., at a time of increased and possibly less seasonal rainfall, on large late Bashendi A sites with stone-built structures and a still-diversified food economy. With the drying trend after 6500 B.P., mobile Bashendi B cattle and goat herders continue to aggregate in the oasis for a millennium, still utilizing a variety of resources. More settled Sheikh Muftah groups occupy the oasis lowlands until Old Kingdom times. Throughout the sequence, the early pastoralism of Dakhleh seems more African than West Asian in character.
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quote: Overall, the correlation analysis and the f4 ancestry ratio statistic show that the North African component actually contributes to the signal of gene flow from Neandertals. Given that the North African autochthonous ancestry seems to be 12,000–40,000 years old [17], our hypothesis is that this ancestral population was descendant from the populations that first interbreed with Neandertals about ~37,000–86,000 years ago [18] somewhere in the Middle East. Nonetheless further analyses in populations around the contact areas are needed to confirm this hypothesis.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
Science 7 January 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6013 pp. 20-23 DOI: 10.1126/science.331.6013.20
Until very recently, most researchers studying the origins of Homo sapiens focused on the fossils of East Africa and the sophisticated tools and ornaments of famed South African sites such as Blombos Cave. Few scientists thought that much of evolutionary significance had gone on in North Africa, or that the region's big-toothed, somewhat archaic-looking hominins might be closely related to the ancestors of many living people. Now, thanks to new excavations and more accurate dating, North Africa boasts unequivocal signs of modern human behavior as early as anywhere else in the world, including South Africa. Climate reconstructions and fossil studies now suggest that the region was more hospitable during key periods than once thought. The data suggest that the Sahara Desert was a land of lakes and rivers about 130,000 years ago, when moderns first left Africa for sites in what is today Israel. And new studies of hominin fossils suggest some strong resemblances—and possible evolutionary connections—between North African specimens and fossils representing migrations out of Africa between 130,000 and 40,000 years ago. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6013/20
quote: 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 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.
--Frigi S, Cherni L, Fadhlaoui-Zid K, Benammar-Elgaaied A. Ancient local evolution of African mtDNA haplogroups in Tunisian Berber populations.
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quote: Therefore, the detected ancient admixture is not due to recent Near Eastern or European migrations. Sub-Saharan populations are the only ones not affected by the admixture event with Neandertals.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
quote: ..."it is important to bear in mind that over the centuries the Maghreb has been a melting-pot of many other ethnic groups and cultures"
--A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period, By Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, Cambridge University Press, 1987 - page 5.
Repost,
WHAT BONES CAN TELL: BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HUNTER-GATHERERS OF THE MAGHREB: The extremely large skeletal samples that come from sites such as Taforalt (Fig. 8.13) and Afalou constitute an invaluable resource for understanding the makers of Iberomaurusian artifacts, and their number is unparalleled elsewhere in Africa for the early Holocene. Frequently termed Mechta-Afalou or Mechtoid, these were a skeletally robust people and definitely African in origin, though attempts, such as those of Ferembach (1985), to establish similarities with much older and rarer Aterian skeletal remains are tenuous given the immense temporal separation between the two (Close and Wendorf 1990). At the opposite end of the chronological spectrum, dental morphology does suggest connections with later Africans, including those responsible for the Capsian Industry (Irish 2000) and early mid-Holocene human remains from the western half of the Sahara (Dutour 1989), something that points to the Maghreb as one of the regions from which people recolonised the desert (MacDonald 1998).
Turning to what can be learned about cultural practices and disease, the individuals from Taforalt, the largest sample by far, display little evidence of trauma, though they do suggest a high incidence of infant mortality, with evidence for dental caries, arthritis, and rheumatism among other degenerative conditions. Interestingly, Taforalt also provides one of the oldest known instances of the practice of trepanation, the surgical removal of a portion of the cranium; the patient evidently survived for some time, as there are signs of bone regrowth in the affected area. Another form of body modification was much more widespread and, indeed, a distinctive feature of the Iberomaurusian skeletal sample as a whole. This was the practice of removing two or more of the upper incisors, usually around puberty and from both males and females, something that probably served as both a rite of passage and an ethnic marker (Close and Wendorf 1990), just as it does in parts of sub-Saharan Africa today (e.g., van Reenen 1987). Cranial and postcranial malformations are also apparent and may indicate pronounced endogamy at a much more localised level (Hadjouis 2002), perhaps supported by the degree of variability between different site samples noted by Irish (2000).
--Lawrence Barham The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers (Cambridge World Archaeology)
Craniometric data from seven human groups (Tables 3, 4) were subjected to principal components analysis, which allies the early Holocene population at Gobero (Gob-e) with mid-Holocene “Mechtoids” from Mali and Mauritania [18], [26], [27] and with Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians and early Holocene Capsians from across the Maghreb
Figure 6. Principal components analysis of craniofacial dimensions among Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.
Table 3. Nine human populations sampled for craniometric analysis ranging in age from the Late Pleistocene (ca. 80,000 BP, Aterian) to the mid-Holocene (ca. 4000 BP) and in geographic distribution across the Maghreb to the southern Sahara [18], [19], [26], [27], [54]. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002995.t003
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quote: Therefore, the detected ancient admixture is not due to recent Near Eastern or European migrations. Sub-Saharan populations are the only ones not affected by the admixture event with Neandertals.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
quote: ..."it is important to bear in mind that over the centuries the Maghreb has been a melting-pot of many other ethnic groups and cultures"
--A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period, By Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, Cambridge University Press, 1987 - page 5.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2011 Sep;146(1):49-61. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.21542.
Biogeochemical inferences of mobility of early Holocene fisher-foragers from the Southern Sahara Desert.
Stojanowski CM, Knudson KJ.
Source
Center for Bioarchaeological Research, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. christopher.stojanowski@asu.edu
Abstract
North Africa is increasingly seen as an important context for understanding modern human evolution and reconstructing biocultural adaptations. The Sahara, in particular, witnessed a fluorescence of hunter-gatherer settlement at the onset of the Holocene after an extended occupational hiatus. Subsequent subsistence changes through the Holocene are contrary to those documented in other areas where mobile foraging gave way to settled agricultural village life. In North Africa, extractive fishing and hunting was supplanted by cattle and caprine pastoralism under deteriorating climatic conditions. Therefore, the initial stage of food production in North Africa witnessed a likely increase in mobility. However, there are few studies of paleomobility in Early Holocene hunter-gatherer Saharan populations and the degree of mobility is generally assumed. Here, we present radiogenic strontium isotope ratios from Early Holocene fisher-forager peoples from the site of Gobero, central Niger, southern Sahara Desert. Data indicate a relatively homogeneous radiogenic strontium isotope signature for this hunter-gather population with limited variability exhibited throughout the life course or among different individuals. Although the overall signature was local, some variation in the radiogenic strontium isotope data likely reflects transhumance into the nearby Aïr Massif. Data from Gobero were significantly less variable than in other worldwide hunter-gatherer populations, including those thought to be fairly sedentary. Strontium data from Gobero were also significantly different from contemporaneous sites in southwestern Libya. These patterns are discussed with respect to archaeological models of community organization and technological evolution.
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Domestication Processes and Morphological Change Through the Lens of the Donkey and African Pastoralism Fiona Marshall and Lior Weissbrod
Fiona Marshall is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Washington University, Saint Louis (1 Brooking Drive, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130, U.S.A. [fmarshal@artsci.wustl.edu]). Lior Weissbrod is a postdoctoral researcher at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa (Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel [lweissbr@research.haifa.ac.il]).
Little is known about the beginnings and spread of food production in the tropics, but recent research suggests that definitions that depend on morphological change may hamper recognition of early farming in these regions. The earliest form of food production in Africa developed in arid tropical grasslands. Animals were the earliest domesticates, and the mobility of early herders shaped the development of social and economic systems. Genetic data indicate that cattle were domesticated in North Africa and suggest domestication of two different African wild asses, in the Sahara and in the Horn. Cowpeas and pearl millet were domesticated several thousand years later, but some intensively used African plants have never undergone morphological change. Morphological, genetic, ethnoarchaeological, and behavioral research reveals relationships between management, animal behavior, selection, and domestication of the donkey. Donkeys eventually showed phenotypic and morphological changes distinctive of domestication, but the process was slow. This African research on domestication of the donkey and the development of pastoralism raises questions regarding how we conceptualize hunter-gatherer versus food-producer land use. It also suggests that we should focus more intently on the methods used to recognize management, agropastoral systems, and domestication events.
This paper was submitted 13 XI 09, accepted 02 XII 10, and electronically published 08 VI 11.
The question of whether understanding of the beginnings of food production is being constrained by definitions and methods of detection that focus on morphological change rather than management is becoming a major theme in studies of the origins of agriculture. Recent research in the humid tropics of southeastern Asia and the Pacific suggests that definitions that depend on morphological change hamper recognition of early farming in these areas (Bayliss-Smith 2007; Denham 2007, 2011). This perspective has so far centered on plants of the humid tropics that have a history of long-term cultivation in agricultural systems but lack morphological change (Denham 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Yen 1989). Another feature of both humid and arid tropical agricultural practices that has strained conceptions of early agricultural systems is the variety of economic activities—including fishing, gathering, hunting, cultivation, and herding—that may be combined in complex and diverse subsistence systems (Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002; for North America, Smith 2001, 2011).
In their approach to definitions and the question of whether morphological change is an effective marker of domestication, Jones and Brown (2007) focus on selection processes and timing rather than on region. They contend that under certain circumstances, practices of cultivation and protective tending could have resulted in stable long-term systems of food production that depended on plants and animals lacking distinctively domestic morphological and genetic characteristics. Reproductive isolation and morphological change, Jones and Brown (2007) go on to suggest, are linked with later stages of agricultural development, when human populations expanded and people removed plants and animals from their wild ranges.
There is a growing appreciation, however, of differences among species in time elapsed before domestication processes are readily detectable and of variability in the sensitivity of methods that can be brought to bear on any given taxon. In a detailed study of the domestication of goats in western Asia, Zeder (Zeder 2008; Zeder and Hesse 2000) used regional and age- and sex-based variability in animal size to document early herd management, which was followed by diminution in size. In the absence of clear morphological indicators, evidence for management—culling, corralling, and milking—has also been key to a better understanding of early phases of domestication of the horse (Outram et al. 2009). The discovery by Rossel et al. (2008) that donkeys used by Egyptian pharaohs for transport at approximately 5000 cal BP (historic date 3000 BC; table 1) remained morphologically wild 1,000 years after they were thought to have been first domesticated further emphasizes possibilities for underestimating the timing of domestication of large mammals and draws attention to species-specific pathways to domestication (see also Zeder 2011).
Table 1. Key African animal and plant domesticates, with summaries of sites, date ranges, and arguments for management or domestication processes
In the light of these different emphases on global, regional, and taxon-specific impacts of late morphological change on general understanding of early food production, we evaluate current perspectives on the beginnings of food production in Africa, a continent that represents the world’s largest tropical landmass. We reexamine evidence of early animal and plant domesticates and employ ethnoarchaeological data on donkey management and breeding behavior to examine species-specific domesticatory practices that influenced selection and the likelihood of morphological change. These analyses allow us to return to the larger question of Africa’s contribution to understanding variability in early agricultural systems worldwide. In most of Africa, pastoralism is considered the earliest form of agriculture, followed by plant cultivation and adoption of mixed herding-cultivation systems.
Early Food Production in AfricaJump To Section...
Africanists have built up a picture of the beginnings of food production in which early dependence on domestic animals and increasing reliance on mobility guided the development of social and economic systems of the Early Holocene and resulted in late domestication of African plants. Specific themes that have emerged include locally and socially contingent responses to large-scale climatic change, domestication of cattle for food and donkeys for transport, intensive hunting and possible management of Barbary sheep, long-term reliance on a broad range of wild plants and animals, and late domestication of African plants.
In this review of the African evidence, we see domestication as a microevolutionary process that transformed animal and plant communities and human societies (see Clutton-Brock 1992), but we examine rather than assume relationships between domestication and long-term genetic and morphological change (see also Vigne et al. 2011). We follow Zeder (2009, 2011; Rindos 1984) in emphasizing long-term coevolutionary relations between people, animals, and plants, but unlike Rindos (1984), we also highlight the intentional role that individuals played in selection (Hildebrand 2003b; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Pastoralism is also an important concept for discussions of the beginnings of food production in Africa, and this, we argue, differs from herding or simple keeping of animals because pastoralists rely on moving livestock to pasture and emphasize the social and symbolic role of domestic animals (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980; Smith 2005; Spear and Waller 1993). This does not necessarily imply, however, a diet heavily based on domestic animals. Historically, African pastoralists prioritized the needs of their herds in scheduling activities and locating settlements (McCabe 2004; Western and Dunne 1979), but they usually relied on a broad range of complementary subsistence strategies ranging from seasonal cultivation, fishing, hunting, and gathering to food exchange or trade (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980; Evans-Pritchard 1940; Schneider 1979). As a result, it is overly simplistic to rely on high proportions of domestic animal bones to differentiate pastoral from hunter-gatherer or farming sites. Multiple lines of evidence are necessary, including households oriented to mobility—with slope, soil, and vegetation characteristics organized around the needs of domestic herds (Western and Dunne 1979)—animal pens, dung deposits (Shahack-Gross, Marshall, and Weiner 2003; Shahack-Gross, Simons, and Ambrose 2008), milk residues (see Evershed et al. 2008), livestock-focused rock art, and ritual livestock burials (di Lernia 2006).
Domesticatory Settings: Climatic and Social Variability and Subsistence Intensification
Large-scale climate change forms the backdrop to the beginnings of food production in northeastern Africa (Kröpelin et al. 2008). Hunter-gatherer communities deserted most of the northern interior of the continent during the arid glacial maximum and took refuge along the North African coast, the Nile Valley, and the southern fringes of the Sahara (Barich and Garcea 2008; Garcea 2006; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). During the subsequent Early Holocene African humid phase, from the mid-eleventh to the early ninth millennium cal BP, ceramic-using hunter-gatherers took advantage of more favorable savanna conditions to resettle much of northeastern Africa (Holl 2005; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). Evidence of domestic animals first appeared in sites in the Western Desert of Egypt, the Khartoum region of the Nile, northern Niger, the Acacus Mountains of Libya, and Wadi Howar (Garcea 2004, 2006; Pöllath and Peters 2007; fig. 1).
During the Early and mid-Holocene, diverse hunter-gatherer groups lived close to permanent water in widely separated regions of northeastern Africa, from the Acacus to Lake Victoria (Caneva 1988; Garcea 2006; Holl 2005; Prendergast and Lane 2010). Ethnoarchaeological research suggests that this social and economic variability played a significant role in pathways to food production in Africa. Recent hunter-gatherers with long-term investment in hive and trap construction and delayed-return social systems and limited sharing have historically been able to accommodate more easily property-rights issues arising out of time investment in agriculture than have those with highly egalitarian norms (Brooks, Gelburd, and Yellen 1984; Dale, Marshall, and Pilgram 2004; Marshall 2000; Smith 1998; Woodburn 1982). Moreover, cattle herding requires significantly greater commitment than cultivation because foragers can tend crops intermittently and accommodate them into flexible hunter-gatherer schedules, whereas animal herds require protection against predators and constant attention (Dale, Marshall, and Pilgram 2004; Marshall 2000). As a result, Africanists have hypothesized that domestication of cattle is more likely to have been undertaken and pastoralism adopted in regions of northeastern Africa that were occupied by complex rather than highly mobile egalitarian hunter-gatherers (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002).
Arguments that complex or delayed-return systems of social organization existed in the Acacus, the Sudanese Nile Valley, and some other regions of the African Early to mid-Holocene are based on elaboration of material culture, including manufacture of ceramics and storage facilities in these areas and highly patterned use of rock-shelter sites and local landscapes (Barich 1987; di Lernia 1999, 2001; Garcea 2004; McDonald 2008). Significant investment in living spaces and limited movement are indicated by hut construction at Nabta Playa in the Acacus Mountains and the northern Sudanese Nile Valley and by isotopic analyses at Gobero in Niger and Acacus sites (Barich 1987; Garcea 2006; Sereno et al. 2008; Tafuri et al. 2006). In the central Sahara, the Sudanese Nile Valley, and the Acacus, human burials are common (Caneva 1988; Honegger 2004; Sereno et al. 2008). Garcea (2004) and di Lernia (1999, 2001) argue that their presence in the Late Acacus phase (ca. 10,250–9600 to 9890–9440 cal BP) may relate to group identities and rights to land.
North African hunter-gatherers of the Early and mid-Holocene employed highly diverse subsistence as well as social systems. Wild cattle (Bos primigenius) were hunted along the Mediterranean coast and the Nile Valley, and small numbers of wild ass (Equus africanus) were also present in many sites (Alhaique and Marshall 2009; Gautier 1987a; Marshall 2007). Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) were the most common animal hunted across North Africa at this time (di Lernia 2001; Gautier 1987a; Saxon et al. 1974). In the Late Acacus sites of Ti-n-Torah, Uan Tabu, and Uan Afuda, intensive exploitation of wild cereals (e.g., Echinochloa, Panicum, Setaria, Digitaria, and Pennisetum) is associated with heavy grindstone use (di Lernia 1999; Garcea 2001; Mercuri 2001; fig. 1). A similar set of wild grass seeds were harvested, processed, and stored in the eastern Sahara during the late tenth and early ninth millennia at Nabta Playa, site E-75-6 (Wasylikowa et al. 1993; Wendorf and Schild 1998; for radiocarbon dates, see table 2). Along the Sudanese Nile, a variety of wild mammals were hunted in conjunction with fishing for large deepwater fish and intensive grindstone use (Caneva 1988; Haaland 1987).
There has been a recurrent suggestion that some North Africans penned and culled Barbary sheep herds during early phases of the Holocene (di Lernia 1998, 2001; Garcea 2006; Saxon et al. 1974; table 1). Earlier arguments for management without morphological change were based on young male–dominated culling profiles from the sites of Tamar Hat and Haua Fteah on the Mediterranean coast (Saxon et al. 1974; Smith 2008; fig. 1). More recent evidence is based on the presence of dung accumulations in the rear of rock-shelter sites occupied by complex hunter-gatherers during the tenth and early ninth millennia cal BP in the Libyan Acacus at Uan Afuda, Uan Tabu, and Fozzigiaren (Cremaschi and Trombino 2001; di Lernia 2001; Garcea 2006). Di Lernia (2001) argues that dense dung deposits in these rock shelters differ from natural dung accumulations characterized by loose and scattered pellet matrices and result instead from use of shelters for corralling animals. Micromorphological analyses of the “dung layer” sediments suggest trampling and indicate the presence of spherulites common in caprine dung, and studies of the plant remains indicate a selected range of plant species suggestive of foddering (Castelletti et al. 1999; di Lernia 2001; Mercuri 1999). Interestingly, Livingstone Smith (2001) notes that hunter-gatherer pottery of Late Acacus levels at Uan Afuda is dung tempered, a characteristic of later pastoral ceramics. The number of Barbary sheep remains declines in later sites, however, and there are no dung deposits that suggest subsequent emphasis on Barbary sheep (di Lernia 1999; Garcea 2001, 2004). Taken together, the micromorphological and archaeological evidence for dung accumulation resulting from penning of Barbary sheep in the Late Acacus rock shelters is suggestive, but additional faunal data and dung deposits are needed from open-air sites.
Domestication of African cattle?
The evidence for taming of wild cattle during the Early Holocene provides an interesting parallel to that for management of Barbary sheep. Wendorf and colleagues (Gautier 1987b; Wendorf and Królik 2001; Wendorf and Schild 1998; Wendorf, Schild, and Close 1984) have argued that seasonally settled hunter-gatherers of the Nabta Playa region (fig. 1) domesticated African cattle in the Western Desert of Egypt during the eleventh to tenth millennium cal BP (reviews of arguments in Gifford-Gonzalez 2005; table 2). Domestic sheep and goats, on the other hand, were introduced to Africa from southwestern Asia during the early eighth millennium cal BP and postdate the appearance of cattle at all sites except Uan Muhaggiag (Gautier 2001; Linseele 2010; Linseele et al. 2010). The independent domestication of African cattle has been tied to arid episodes, the desire of hunter-gatherers for increased short-term predictability in food resources, and the difficulty of intensifying plant foods under these conditions (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Bos remains are ubiquitous in sites of the Nabta and Bir Kiseiba regions (fig. 1) from the eleventh to the tenth millennium cal BP (table 2) but in very small numbers, precluding detailed analyses of morphometric change or reconstruction of culling profiles (Gautier 2001). Linseele (2004) has demonstrated, however, that size decrease is not a useful indicator of domestication in northeastern Africa because the size of African Bos primigenius varied regionally and temporally and because ancient Egyptian longhorn cattle overlapped in size with some wild cattle populations.
Close and Wendorf (1992) and Gautier (1984b, 1987b) also argued, largely on the basis of a well and a watering basin at site E-75-6, that the repeated presence of water-dependent North African B. primigenius in Western Desert sites during the tenth and ninth millennia cal BP (table 2) reflected range extension facilitated by management and watering of cattle (table 1). Bos cranial remains in a human grave at El Barga in northern Sudan further support the presence of cattle in the region during the early ninth millennium cal BP (Honegger 2005:247–248). The earliest evidence of small domestic cattle from the central Sahara dates, however, to the eighth millennium BP (at Ti-n-Torha and Uan Muhaggiag; Gautier 1987b; fig. 1).
To date, the strongest evidence for domestication of cattle in Africa comes from a series of major studies of the genetic characteristics and biodiversity of contemporary cattle breeds. Changing genetic approaches are reviewed by Larson (2011). Initial analyses of maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) showed that African cattle shared a distinctively higher frequency of the T1 mitochondrial haplogroup than is common in other regions and a large proportion of unique haplotypes (Bradley et al. 1996). These findings are consistent with an independent African domestication, although the possibility of a demographic expansion of Near Eastern cattle in Africa could not be ruled out (Bradley and Magee 2006; but see Achilli et al. 2008). Recent analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphisms from whole-genome sequences derived from small numbers of cattle demonstrate that African breeds diverged early from the European taurine cattle (Decker et al. 2009). New analyses of high-resolution interspersed multilocus microsatellites on the male-specific region of the Y chromosome demonstrate the existence of an African subfamily in taurine cattle of the Y2 haplogroup (Pérez-Pardal et al. 2009). Associated analyses also indicate that neither the genetic diversity in the African mtDNA T1 haplogroup nor the diversity in the Y2 haplogroup is consistent with the bottleneck that would have been required to fix these haplotypes from Near Eastern taurine cattle (Pérez-Pardal et al. 2010; see also Bovine HapMap Consortium 2009). Taken together with data on variation in autosomal microsatellites (rapidly evolving regions of the nuclear genome) and other data on Y-chromosome variability in African cattle breeds (Bradley and Magee 2006; Hanotte et al. 2002), the genetic data as a whole point strongly to an independent African domestication of cattle (Pérez-Pardal et al. 2009, 2010).
Ethnographic studies suggest, however, that genetic and phenotypic change may have been slow in early northeastern-African cattle and that neither morphological nor genetic studies are likely to detect the early phases of this process. Given recurrent cycles of drought and disease, contemporary African pastoralists manage their herds for maximum growth by keeping a high proportion of females in herds (Dahl and Hjort 1976). However, the main intentional selective processes acting on African cattle are culling and castration, which affect males rather than females (Dahl and Hjort 1976; Ryan et al. 2000). Natural selection in the form of drought and disease often play a larger role in mortality than culling (Mutundu 2005), multiple bulls are common in herds, offtake is low (4%–8%), and culling often takes place after sexual maturity (Ryan et al. 2000). Such processes, together with some introgression with wild bulls, are likely to have worked against rapid morphological change in early pastoral herds and to have resulted in a postmanagement lag in morphological change.
Domestication of the donkey.
It has long been suggested that ancient Egyptians domesticated the donkey (Equus asinus), although the Near East has also been considered a possible area of origin. Egyptian Predynastic sites have yielded the earliest potential domestic donkeys, which date to the mid-seventh millennium cal BP (historic date 4600–4400 BC; Boessneck and von den Driesch 1990; table 1). Some faunal elements from these sites, zooarchaeologists argue, exhibit size decrease relative to the wild ass (Boessneck and von den Driesch 1990), but widespread morphological change was slow to develop in ancient Egypt. Evidence of bone pathologies from early dynastic donkey burials at Abydos (fig. 1) demonstrates that by approximately 5000 cal BP (historic date 3000 BC), First Dynasty Egyptian kings were using donkeys to carry heavy loads (Rossel et al. 2008). Rossel et al. (2008) show, however, that these animals were not yet morphologically distinguishable from the African wild ass.
Recent studies of genetic variability in modern donkeys suggest that prehistoric pastoralists may have domesticated donkeys on the fringes of the Sahara. Beja-Pereira and colleagues (2004; also Vilá, Leonard, and Beja-Pereira 2006) document the existence of two different haplogroups or clades of domestic donkeys. Their genetic-diversity data suggest two domestication events, both in northeastern Africa. Kimura et al.’s (2010) recent analysis of ancient DNA from the Nubian donkey (Equus africanus africanus) and the Somali wild ass (Equus africanus somaliensis) demonstrates that the Nubian wild ass was the ancestor of modern donkey Clade I but that the ancestor of donkeys of Clade II is currently unknown. This research also documents the ancient distribution of the Nubian wild ass and Clade I donkeys from the Atbara River and Red Sea Hills in Sudan and northern Eritrea across the Sahara to Libya, a geographic distribution that suggests that prehistoric pastoralists domesticated Clade I donkeys (Kimura et al. 2010). However, domestication by pastoralists or farmers of the northern Nile Valley during late prehistoric/early Predynastic times is also a possibility.
The Herding-Hunting Mosaic and the Spread of Pastoralism
In the central Sahara, cattle became common in the eighth to sixth millennium cal BP at sites such as Ti-n-Torha, Uan Muhaggiag, Uan Telocat, Adrar Bous, Gobero, Enneri Bardagué, and Wadi Howar (Clark et al. 2008; di Lernia 2006; Garcea 2004; Gautier 1987b; Jesse et al. 2007; Roset 1987; Sereno et al. 2008; fig. 1). The main advantages for hunter-gatherers of herding cattle over intensification of plant resources or reliance on hunting and gathering are thought to have been decreased reliance on local rainfall and increased predictability in daily access to cattle herds for blood, meat, and ceremonial purposes (Jesse et al. 2007; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Foraging continued, but the intensity of the new human-animal relationship would have required ownership patterns and schedules oriented to animal care and transformation of hunter-gatherer societies. Dependence on wild calories could have been somewhat reduced, however, by milking, a practice that archaeologists have tended to assume was adopted after herding for blood and meat and with some difficulty (but see Linseele 2010).
Different genetic bases for lactase persistence in Europe and Africa show coevolution between people and cattle and the strong selective advantage conferred by drinking milk (Tishkoff et al. 2006). Interestingly, recent research has documented lactase persistence among some contemporary African hunter-gatherers. Tishkoff et al. (2006, supplementary information) note that lactase persistence could be selected for by delaying weaning of infants and, moreover, that the trait is also adaptive for digestion of certain roots and barks. This suggests several pathways to lactase persistence among hunter-gatherers and raises the question of whether African herders milked their cattle earlier and incorporated dairy products into their diets with fewer digestive difficulties than previously thought. However, milking scenes depicted in prehistoric African rock art and in Saharan ceramics have so far not produced dates or residues that bear on the antiquity of milking in Africa (Jesse et al. 2007; Marshall 2000).
Oscillating periods of aridity and humidity resulted in periods of increased mobility and occasional depopulation of the Sahara (di Lernia 2002; Garcea 2004; Kröpelin et al. 2008). In the eighth to seventh millennia cal BP, herders combined livestock keeping with hunting and collection of wild grain in regions such as the Acacus Mountains (Gautier 1987b). At Adrar Bous and other sites near lowland lakes, herders also fished and collected shellfish (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005; Smith 1992; fig. 1). Cattle-focused rock art attests to the symbolic importance of cattle for Saharan herders (Holl 2004; Smith 1992, 2005). Hunter-gatherers also flourished during this period at sites such as Dakleh Oasis (McDonald 2008) and Amekni (Camps 1969; fig. 1), creating a mosaic of hunters and herders across northeastern Africa (fig. 1).
Through the mid-Holocene, grasslands became more arid, precipitation became increasingly unpredictable, and desert regions of the Sahara expanded. Northeastern Africans responded to these pressures by heightening mobility, relying on introduced sheep and goats, and decreasing use of wild cereals (Barich 2002; di Lernia 2002; Garcea 2004; Gautier 1987a). It was during this period that the donkey was domesticated (Rossel et al. 2008). Their use would have made increased residential mobility and dispersal of settlements from water possible and would have facilitated long-distance migrations (Marshall 2007).
Significant expansion of the geographic distribution of the dotted-wavy-line ceramic motif and distinctive human mortuary practices in the early seventh millennium cal BP reflect the southward movement of pastoralists, long-distance contacts among Saharan groups, and elaboration of pastoralist ideologies (Jesse et al. 2007; Keding, Lenssen-Erz, and Pastoors 2007; Smith 1992; Wendorf and Królik 2001). Just as in the Mediterranean and western Europe, however, the trajectories of small immigrant groups may have varied greatly (Özdoğan 2011; Rowley-Conwy 2011). Domestic stock appear to the south in the Sudanese Sahel by the early seventh millennium cal BP at Esh Shaheinab and Kadero (Gautier 1984a, 1984b) and by the mid-fifth millennium cal BP in Kenya (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Similarly, Saharan lithics and other traces of Saharan herders are first found in the West African Sahel by approximately 4500 cal BP (Jousse et al. 2008; Linseele 2010; Smith 1992). Di Lernia (2006) argues that the widespread ritual burial of cattle across the Sahara at the end of the seventh millennium BP represents a social response to rapid aridification. Cattle burials and associated ritual activity are a prominent feature of site E-96-1 at Nabta (Wendorf and Królik 2001). At Djabarona 84/13, in the middle of Wadi Howar from the beginning of the sixth millennium cal BP, more than a thousand pits are filled with cattle bones and relatively complete ceramic pots (Jesse et al. 2007; fig. 1). As far south as Kenya by the middle of the fifth millennium cal BP, large stone circles such as those at Jarigole were constructed as centers for human burial rituals by southward-migrating herders (Marshall, Grillo, and Arco 2011; Nelson 1995). Hunter-gatherers, however, continued to flourish after the movement of herders into these regions (Lane et al. 2007; Lesur, Vigne, and Gutherz 2007).
Domestication of African Plants
The earliest evidence for domestication of indigenous African plants with morphological change dates only to the beginnings of the fourth millennium cal BP (table 1). Although many Holocene hunter-gatherers of northeastern Africa relied heavily on wild Saharan cereals, high mobility and repeated abandonment of the region seem to have impeded long-term directional selection and morphological and genetic change. Instead, selection processes culminated in morphological change once Saharan herders settled in the southern reaches of the Sahara and more humid Sahelian regions and established more permanent settlements in areas that were still within or close to the edge of the wild range of Saharan species.
Sahelian herders—who also hunted, gathered, and fished—integrated cultivation of domestic pearl millet Pennisetum glaucum into their subsistence economies in one or two domestication events documented at or after 3898–3640 cal BP at sites west of Lake Chad, including Karkarichinkat Nord (KN05), Dhar Tichitt, Birimi, and Gajiganna (D’Andrea, Klee, and Casey 2001; Fuller 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Manning et al. 2011; fig. 1, table 1). Morphologically, this is evidenced by changes in seed shedding and shape, although increases in seed size were delayed (D’Andrea, Klee, and Casey 2001). Fuller (2007) argues that the appearance of domestic pearl millet in India in the mid-fourth millennium cal BP indicates a somewhat earlier African domestication and rapid dispersal. Recent research has also shown that the cow pea Vigna unguiculata was also an early-fourth-millennium morphological domesticate, dating to ca. 3898–3475 cal BP at the Kintampo B-sites in the grasslands of central Ghana (D’Andrea et al. 2007; table 2). By contrast, African rice Oryza glaberrima was domesticated in the inland Niger delta of the Niger bend region by the early second millennium cal BP. On the eastern side of the continent, domestic teff Eagrostis tef and finger millet Eleusine coracana were cultivated by Aksumite populations in the Ethiopian highlands by the beginnings of the second millennium cal BP (historic date AD 150–350; D’Andrea 2008). The oil-seed noog Guizotia abyssinica is also present in Late Aksumite contexts (D’Andrea 2008). D’Andrea (2008) points out, however, that morphological change is difficult to identify in the small-seeded cereal teff, which was selected for reliable production under arid conditions rather than for increased seed size. In humid forested southwestern Ethiopia, Hildebrand (2003a, 2003b, 2007) has documented varied selection processes leading to domestication of yams Dioscorea cayenensis and ensete Ensete ventricosum. In these and other areas of Africa, domestic plants are thought to have been advantageous to pastoral hunter-fishers for risk minimization and greater predictability (D’Andrea et al. 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002).
Although morphological change occurred in a range of domesticated African plant taxa, it has been suggested that a number of African savanna plants were cultivated or intensively managed over the long term in ways that did not lead to morphological domestication (reviews in Marshall and Hildebrand 2002; Neumann 2005). Haaland (1999) and Abdel-Magid (1989) argued, largely on the basis of the ∼30,000 grindstones that were unearthed at the site of Um Direiwa, for cultivation of sorghum Sorghum bicolor in Sudanese sites dating to the seventh millennium cal BP (table 1). Mechanisms that they suggested for late morphological change include continued outcrossing between cultivated and wild populations and harvesting through beating into baskets or uprooting. This has led to arguments that sorghum was not morphologically domesticated until it was removed from its wild African range (Haaland 1999; but see Fuller 2003). Although mechanisms exist that may have caused late morphological change in African cereals and harvesting of wild grains was at times intensive, there is no macrobotanical evidence or indication of landscape modification that supports claims for cultivation of African grains before the early fourth millennium cal BP.
In the wetter tropical regions, there is evidence of long-term use of a number of forest taxa without morphological change. Long-term use of oil palm Elaeis guineensis and incense trees Canarium schweinfurthii has been documented across the humid tropics of Africa (D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006; Mercader et al. 2006). This pattern is not confined to forests, however. D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson (2006:216–217) argue that Kintampo people living in the grasslands of central Ghana employed a system of arboriculture that did not rely on management strategies that would result in morphological change. Kahlheber and Neumann (2007) also note that a number of west African park savanna species, such as baobab Adsonia digitata and the shea-butter tree Vitellaria paradoxa, were protected and encouraged but never domesticated. Other wild plants that are still protected and sometimes actively sown in many different African environments include weedy green species ranging in status from crops to semidomesticated or wild (Kahlheber and Neumann 2007; Marshall 2001). Kahlheber and Neumann (2007:333) point out that in the West Africa Sahel, reliance on morphologically wild park savanna species became more evident when economies diversified and populations concentrated close to water 2,000 years ago. In many regions of Africa, Iron Age agriculturalists relied on a particularly broad range of resources, and farmers incorporated diverse domestic crops and managed plants, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, and donkeys into their agricultural systems and fished and hunted a wide range of wild-animal foods (Casey 2005; Neumann 2005; Plug and Voigt 1985; van Neer 2000).
This brings to the fore the question raised at the outset of whether such diverse subsistence strategies fit current conceptions of agricultural systems. Kahlheber and Neumann (2007:339) are doubtful whether “farming” is an appropriate term for some of these ways of life. Smith’s (2001, 2011) term “low-level food production” has been used in the region, but it does not fully capture the complexities of African settings. The question of whether the Kintampo should be considered “foragers,” “farmers,” or something else has also been reviewed by Casey (2005) and by D’Andrea and colleagues (D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006:216–218; D’Andrea et al. 2007), who argue that although there are clear-cut cases of foragers or farmers in Africa, there are many others that defy simple categorization. Hildebrand’s (2003a) ethnographic research among the Sheko of southwestern Ethiopia and the literature on use of weedy greens in Africa (Etkin 1994; Fleuret 1979; Marshall 2001 and references therein) provide ample evidence that such subsistence strategies have long-term trajectories in many parts of Africa and cannot be dismissed as transitory.
Ethnoarchaeological Insight into Management, Selection Processes, and Domestication of the DonkeyJump To Section...
One approach to better addressing conceptual problems presented by questions of late morphological change and the diversity of economic systems in Africa is to consider pathways to domestication for particular species in light of the potential for morphological change, or lack thereof, in specific social and environmental contexts. The question that we address here is how the behavior of the African wild ass and management of donkeys by herders and small-scale farmers in Africa contribute to selection processes and the likelihood of development of archaeological signatures of domestication in the donkey. This analysis focuses on aspects of the biology and behavior of the donkey and its use as a transport animal that influence management practices in extensive pastoral and agricultural systems and are relevant (sensu Wylie 2002) to ancient settings for domestication. It is often argued, for instance, that sociability and the presence of a dominance hierarchy are desirable characteristics for potential domesticatability (Clutton-Brock 1992; Diamond 1997). African wild ass do not, however, fit this profile. The extant Somali wild ass, or dibokali, is solitary or forms groups with weak short-term associations. It also lacks a pronounced dominance hierarchy (Klingel 1974; Moehlman 2002). This social system profoundly influences donkey behavior under human management.
Recent ethnoarchaeologial research on donkey use and management among Maasai households in Kajiado District of southern Kenya provides the first detailed information on selection processes in a pastoral social and economic context. During 2006, Lior Weissbrod lived in Maasai communities in the study area and collected interview and participant observation data from 26 women from eight households spread among six different pastoral settlements (table 3). The study focused on use and daily management, herd composition, mortality, and breeding behavior. After a 2-year period of severe drought (2004–2006), the donkey holdings of households participating in the study were reduced but still totaled 65.
Donkeys were not regarded as food. They were considered women’s animals, important for transport but without the symbolic status of cattle. Women were the caretakers of donkeys and used them to carry household goods during residential moves, to collect water, and to take intermittent trips to trading centers. Donkeys also carried meat, firewood, and water for large ceremonies. During the dry season, women went long distances for water every other day, returning with a typical load of 50 L per donkey. Children herded household donkeys with the calves, but during the wet season, donkeys were free ranging. Many families penned donkeys within the settlement thorn fence or in calf enclosures at night for protection against predators.
Our data show that the use of donkeys in Kajiado enhanced the flexibility and stability of local herding systems (see also Marshall 2007; Marshall and Weissbrod 2009). Families in the study area who did not own donkeys could not move as a whole away from permanent sources of water and were unable to make optimum use of available grazing. Donkeys were, nevertheless, managed less than other livestock. Marshall (2007) previously noted that the ability of donkeys to dig for water and to protect themselves from predators more successfully than other livestock was associated with low levels of management, which might result in low levels of selection. Our data show that behavior was a factor but that the level of use of donkeys in the study area ultimately determined the degree to which donkeys were herded and penned.
In addition to management practices, we also collected information on reproduction and desired characteristics of donkeys that might be selected for through strategic breeding. Women that we talked to particularly valued strength and calmness in a donkey. Some also mentioned the importance of disease and drought resistance, although they noted that donkeys were less vulnerable to these hazards than other livestock. We found, however, that participants in the study made no attempt at all to influence mate choice among donkeys or to breed for particular characteristics. The ancestry of a particular donkey was unknown except for the female parent. By contrast, research on cattle genealogies shows that Maasai herders memorize these in great detail for several generations (Ryan et al. 2000). The lack of strategic breeding of donkeys is influenced by donkey behavior and herd compositions but is also related, at least in part, to the fact that Maasai herders do not use donkeys as symbols of social transactions in the same way that they do cattle or value color distinctions ideologically.
The dynamics of wild ass mating systems, based on short-lived associations that occur when females move through male territories, influence donkey breeding in the domesticated environment. Maasai women stressed their concern with the aggressive behavior of jacks during mating. Even when they wanted to keep a female from breeding with an especially aggressive jack, women said that they found it impossible to keep the male away. They also noted that estrus jennies might go astray without warning in search of males. They are often lost this way, and we documented a number of cases in which wandering females, as well as males, were cared over a long term by women in distant settlements. Lack of selection because of the difficulty of controlling donkey breeding is, therefore, likely wherever a premium is placed on “wild” characteristics of the donkey, such as strength, rather than on docility and productivity for food. The relatively high proportion of males in herds (one male∶two females) is another factor that makes control over breeding logistically difficult. Because donkey owners kept small herds specifically for transport, they weighed the breeding advantages of females against the superior transport potential of males. The strength of males was greatly favored, and so was their consistent availability for transport use.
Herd growth and mortality patterns also contributed to patterns of selection in domestic donkey herds. Pastoral Maasai donkeys had, on average, a foal every 2 years. Mortality resulted from predation by hyenas, disease, and drought. Herds grew relatively slowly, and additional animals were recruited to herds through gifts, loans, and purchase. Socially based loans or exchanges of cattle are deeply woven into the fabric of Maasai society (Ryan et al. 2000). To a lesser extent, this system is also used for donkeys, and social exchange is a mechanism of selection and gene flow. Animals entering or leaving a herd through loans were carefully selected and predominantly female. In some cases, however, exchanges were involuntary, resulting from donkeys running away.
In the wet season, herds of donkeys made up of animals from different settlements in the same neighborhoods range freely. This practice and the system of intentional and unintentional loans maintain gene flow among settlements. Purchases were rarer than loans also but recruited animals to slow-growing herds and maintained intentional selection on an interregional scale. Men purchased animals when visiting markets, and the strength and price of the donkey were major considerations affecting purchases. Young male donkeys were cheaper than others, and purchases were one male∶two females. There was no intentional culling of donkeys, and donkeys were not eaten, but small, slow-growing, or aggressive males were removed from the breeding pool through castration. We recorded six castrated males (40% of the males studied), and castration of male donkeys was a more important factor affecting the direction of intentional selection than culling or selective breeding.
Very few studies of donkey management and selection have been conducted in settled agricultural villages. Mohammed’s (1991) and Wilson’s (1991) Ethiopian research can, however, be used for comparison with the Maasai pastoral study. They focused on Ethiopian farmers of the central and southern highlands who used donkeys to transport grain to market and for hauling household firewood and water. Most families in the study areas kept one to two donkeys, usually female (Mohammed 1991; Wilson 1991). Donkeys were also loaned to family and friends. In the Awassa region, males were rare (100 females∶1 male); in other regions the number of males was higher (73 females∶27 males). Where males were more common, they were usually less than 4 years old. Mohammed (1991) notes that male donkeys were not castrated. We infer that low proportions of males in herds indicated male culling, although donkey eating was not discussed. People in Awassa did not supervise donkeys when they were not using them, and Mohammed (1991) documents minimal donkey management and poor animal nutrition in this area. Because of the danger presented by hyenas, however, people often brought donkeys inside their houses at night. There was no intentional control over breeding, however. Mohammed mentions that copulation might occur anywhere and was actively discouraged in the market center (Mohammed 1991).
Overview of management and selection.
In order to consider patterns of directional selection, it is useful to examine factors that affect the likelihood of genetic drift, intentional selection, and reproductive isolation in donkeys managed by pastoralists and small-scale farmers. Culling of male donkeys by Ethiopian villagers and castration of male donkeys by Maasai pastoralists were important factors affecting selection. These practices ensured that males with desired traits, such as strength or size, remained in the breeding pool. Females, on the other hand, were never culled, and management of donkeys was minimal. None of the donkey owners that we studied tried to ensure a diverse set of breeding males, to breed select females or males, or to keep records of parentage. We argue that these management practices are influenced by wild ass and donkey courtship and breeding behavior and have significant consequences for long-term directional selection and domesticatory processes. The data also indicate that different sets of functional and symbolic considerations affect Maasai practices of cattle and donkey management and are associated with differing levels of selective pressure and control of gene flow. In our study area, people also bred or obtained cattle for ideal coat colors and conformation, and it is possible that without this additional symbolic motivation, functional reasons for breeding donkeys were not enough to overcome significant practical difficulties. As research on mammals such as the fur fox (Belyaev 1979; Trut 1999) and the guinea pig (Künzl et al. 2003) has shown, without selective breeding, retention of individual animals with desired traits and culling of others, directional selection may be very slow or fail to occur even in the absence of gene flow from wild populations.
From a wider perspective, there are related issues that work against genetic drift as a major factor driving genetic and morphological change in donkeys. In both the Maasai and Ethiopian Arsi cases, donkeys from numerous households grazed unsupervised in mixed herds, allowing uncontrolled genetic exchange among neighborhood populations. Donkeys were loaned among broad social networks in both regions, and the frequency with which donkeys were taken to market in Ethiopia also provided a wider setting for interbreeding among donkeys from different areas. We argue, however, that in both the pastoral Maasai and Arsi farmer cases, low levels of formal management and lack of intentional selective breeding are linked to donkey biology and behavior, the use of donkeys for transport, and the fact that donkeys are not often eaten. Male culling plays a significantly greater role in animals that are primarily managed for meat—including cattle, sheep, and goat—than it does in donkeys. Although culling and castration affect donkey selection, they are outweighed by lack of directional selection in breeding and consistent gene flow among donkeys over significant distances.
The data for Maasai pastoralists and Ethiopian Arsi farmers also suggest that the potential for gene flow from the wild is likely in both settings but marginally less so in agricultural villages. The Maasai villages studied lie outside the historic range of the wild ass. But it is easy to see that had they not, the runaway tendencies of estrus females would have made the prevention of introgression difficult. Like contemporary herders valuing strength and endurance in their donkeys, historic Beja pastoralists of Sudan and Eritrea intentionally encouraged interbreeding among donkeys from domesticated and wild settings (Baker 1867; Murray 1935). During the 1950s, Nicolaisen (1963) also recorded capture and taming of wild or feral animals by Tuareg pastoralists of the central Sahara.
It is possible, therefore, to begin to identify separate contexts for the domestication process of donkeys in Africa. We predict that ancient Saharan pastoralists reduced the number of breeding males in herds through culling and castration in order to cope with practical difficulties resulting from courtship and breeding behavior in donkeys. Isolation from wild ancestors would have been possible in some pastoral settings as a result of mid-to-Late Holocene climate change, range fragmentation, and pastoral settlement in island or marginal ecosystems. Wild asses may also have been removed from their wild range by pastoral dispersals into the high-altitude Ethiopian highlands and other regions, such as southern Sudan and northern Kenya, outside the historic range of the wild ass.
Selection for morphological change would have been slow until donkeys were removed from close proximity to the wild ass and interbreeding between local donkey populations was restricted. It would appear that reproductive isolation of captive wild asses from free-living populations is somewhat more likely to have occurred in ancient urban settings such as the Predynastic and Dynastic Egyptian towns of the Nile Valley, with permanent walls and high densities of protected agricultural land. Gene flow would still have been possible, however, given the narrowness of the Nile agricultural belt and the mobility of pack donkeys. An appreciation for the advantages of strong animals may also have made interbreeding between captive and wild asses desirable for both villagers and pastoralists.
The lack of morphological change evident in the Abydos donkeys as late as 5000 cal BP (3000 BC; Rossel et al. 2008) demonstrates that size decrease was not generally established until well after this period. It is also conceivable that morphological change did not occur until donkeys were taken across the Red Sea to Yemen or other regions of Asia. Whichever the case, donkeys are a classic example of a species that was used to carry loads for millennia as a domesticate but with late morphological change. We conclude that slow morphological change in domesticated donkeys can be explained by low levels of selection, high potential for interbreeding between founder populations, and potential for introgression with the wild.
Do Holocene Pastoralists in Africa Fit Conceptions of Early Agricultural Systems in Other Regions?
After examining evidence for the beginnings and spread of food production in Africa and analysis of the way that management and behavioral factors affect the likelihood of morphological change in one large mammal—the donkey—we return to consideration of whether African pastoralism fits current conceptions of early agricultural systems developed for other regions. We start by considering the question of whether recognition of early food production in tropical regions of Africa has been hampered by concepts of domestication that rely on morphological change by focusing on donkeys, cattle, Barbary sheep, African cereals, and West African tropical tree crops.
Some evidence suggests that complex hunter-gathers may have attempted to manage cattle in the northeastern Sahara and, for a time, Barbary sheep in the Libyan Acacus. There is no doubt that short-term participation in domesticatory relations are difficult to recognize archaeologically, but nevertheless evidence for management of Barbary sheep is suggestive rather than conclusive. In contrast, genetic data offer a measure of support for the hypothesis of cattle domestication in Africa. The sociality of wild Bovini, however, and the expectation that wild cattle were used mainly for food suggests strong selection and a pathway to domestication—characterized by a postmanagement lag rather than late morphological change and fewer problems with identification of early domesticates—different from that discussed for the donkey.
Ethnoarchaeological data on the donkey reveal relations among selection processes and slow genetic and morphological change and illuminate conditions under which biology and human management influenced domestication and the likelihood of late morphological change. The biological and behavioral reality of donkeys in current domesticatory settings in Africa is that females actively seek out mates, territorial males are reproductively aggressive, and high proportions of males are advantageous for transport use. These factors interact to make reproduction difficult to control and gene flow likely among donkeys of different households and villages, along trade routes, and between tame animals and wild asses.
Archaeological and genetic data suggest that pastoral societies of the Sahara or the Horn of Africa played an important role in the early development of stable and long-term systems of management of morphologically wild donkeys. Morphological change was late, and mechanisms for this probably included creation of built environments of the Nile Valley, late agriculturally modified landscapes, the high mobility of Saharan pastoralists, and ecological fragmentation created by climatic changes of the mid-Holocene.
Although an appreciation of the likelihood of delayed morphological change and biases against identification of domestic donkeys is novel, Africanists have long discussed the question of whether the lack of morphological change resulted in bias against recognition of cultivation of early cereal crops. There is mounting evidence for long periods of intensive use of wild cereal grasses by Early Holocene hunter-gatherers and early herders of the Sahara without evidence of domestic traits. This has been related to a lack of continuous directional selection as a result of increased aridity and pastoral mobility. Morphological changes in well-known African cereals such as pearl millet and pulses such as cowpeas occur relatively late and in conjunction with pastoral sedentization in better-watered locales within the semiarid Sahel and in the more humid West African woodlands after the fourth millennium cal BP. Recent research in more humid regions of West Africa has revealed, however, a number of tended and managed tree crops, such as incense, baobab, and the shea-butter tree, that were heavily used during the Holocene but remain morphologically wild to this day. This is typical of tropical tree crops worldwide and common in weedy greens.
It is worth reiterating at this point that identification of management of plants and animals before genetic or morphological change is inherently problematic, and the longer the period before morphological change occurs in a particular plant, animal, or setting, the greater the difficulties that arise. It is clear that there are at least three axes of variability in morphological responses of plants and animals to selection during coevolutionary relations with humans. We have found it useful here to conceive of this temporal and spatial variation in terms of a “postmanagement lag” before morphological change, as opposed to “late morphological change” or “regionally clustered variability.”
Our review suggests that all these forms of variability exist in Africa. The available data appear to accord with Jones and Brown’s (2007) suggestion that a long, stable period of management without morphological change or a normal “morphological lag” is common to many domesticates worldwide. In Africa, however, it is not clear that their corollary—that population expansion leads to removal of plants and animals from their wild range and morphological change—holds true. Instead, heightened mobility related to climatic changes and increased aridity ultimately led to the movement of some species out of their wild ranges. Furthermore, early African cereals appear to have been domesticated within their wild ranges and intensified on the edge of these regions. Increasingly settled pastoral communities and management practices that maintained directional selection seem to have been more important factors affecting domestication of these crops than reproductive isolation.
We focused above on the possibility of biases against the recognition of early agriculture in tropical regions. We do not, however, see a cluster of taxa subject to late morphological change in the arid or high-altitude subtropics of Africa; here, species-specific analyses of the likelihood of late morphological change are crucial. We agree with Denham (2007), however, that the biology of many species of the African humid tropics increases the likelihood of a lack or significant delay of morphological change and the potential for interpretive bias. These data are strongest with regard to African tree crops. Despite this, however, there is little evidence that archaeologists have ignored early agriculture in the humid tropics of Africa. There is, in fact, no archaeological evidence that the humid tropical forests were heavily populated by African hunter-gatherers during the Early Holocene, and there are few traces of intensification in these regions until after they were settled by food producers (see D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006; D’Andrea et al. 2007; Mercader et al. 2006 and references therein). Nevertheless, as Africanist paleoethnobotanists have pointed out, much work remains to be done on the nature of agricultural systems dating to the past several thousand years in the humid tropics (D’Andrea, Logan, and Watson 2006; Hildebrand 2007; Kahlheber and Neumann 2007).
We conclude that there is no indication of significant regional-scale biases that would have affected current interpretations of the sequence of plant and animal domestication in Africa or geographic patterns of the timing and spread of food production. The larger patterns, as we see them, are that some complex hunter-gatherers of the Early Holocene in North Africa successfully managed cattle, developed pastoral social and subsistence systems, and spread over vast areas of the Sahara. Other such groups in North Africa may have experimented with management of Barbary sheep, but this was short-lived. Later, during the mid-Holocene, there is evidence that donkeys were domesticated by African pastoralists in the Sahara and the Horn of Africa and possibly by Predynastic Egyptians in towns along the Nile. These animals remained morphologically wild for long periods. The earliest plant domesticates in Africa are associated with decreased mobility as pastoralists moved into better-watered locales within the semiarid Sahel and into West Africa. It can also be shown, however, that in some humid tropical regions of Africa, clusters of species existed with a long history of cultivation or tending by established agricultural communities and with biological traits amenable to management but no traces of morphological domestication.
African patterns of food production were distinctive. Animals were domesticated before plants, herding populations became more mobile than their forager ancestors, the subsistence system was characterized by a few morphologically wild domesticates (e.g., the donkey), a wide range of wild resources in ecodiverse combinations continued in use, and mosaics of hunter-gatherers and herders occupied varied regions. Pastoralism developed early in the arid topics, whereas the beginning of farming based on domesticated plants was late.
These African data are informed by and provide perspectives on pathways to food production in other regions. In discussions at the Wenner-Gren conference in Temozón in 2009, Meadow (2009) and Fuller (2009; also see Fuller 2006) argued that South Indian patterns of early pastoralism and subsequent domestication of local millets and pulses are reminiscent of Africa. Similarly, pastoralism has long been considered an early phenomenon in the Andes (Aldenderfer 2003; Browman 1974; Mengoni-Goñalons and Yacobaccio 2006) and the Zagros (Abdi 2003; Hole 1996). Mobile pastoralism is also a major theme in data emerging on the beginnings of food production in central Asia (Frachetti and Benecke 2009; Outram et al. 2009). In addition, Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris (2011) and Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen (2011) document African-like mosaics of hunter-gatherer and early-food-producer settlement in the Levant during the Early Holocene. Evidence is also mounting that shows continued reliance on wild resources and ecodiverse strategies pursued by small-scale food producers or low-level farmers of the Americas and subtropical and tropical regions (Denham 2011; Fritz 2007; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Smith 2001, 2011) and perhaps even temperate regions of Asia (Crawford 2011; Lee 2011; Zhao 2011). Understanding ways in which specific strands such as these contribute to larger similarities and differences in the warp and weft of data on the beginnings of agriculture requires attention to methods of detection of early phases of domestication, information on specific social contexts, and regionally focused and temporarily expansive research. These kinds of data are only just beginning to emerge from Africa, which, as this summary demonstrates, has much to contribute to unraveling patterns of variability in global pathways to food production.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Ofer Bar-Yosef, Douglas Price, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and our companions in Temozón for the genesis of this paper and for challenging and enriching our views about domestication and the spread of food production. The donkey ethnoarchaeological research could not have been conducted without the expert knowledge and gracious support of the people of Kajiado. We are also grateful to the Kenya National Museums and Dr. Purity Kiura for their support and to the government of Kenya for permission to undertake research. This paper has benefited greatly from the thoughtful comments of reviewers. Research was supported by National Science Foundation grants BCS-0447369 and BCS-0536507.
Posts: 22235 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote: Overall, the correlation analysis and the f4 ancestry ratio statistic show that the North African component actually contributes to the signal of gene flow from Neandertals. Given that the North African autochthonous ancestry seems to be 12,000–40,000 years old [17],our hypothesis is that this ancestral population was descendant from the populations that first interbreed with Neandertals about ~37,000–86,000 years ago [18] somewhere in the Middle East.
Nonetheless further analyses in populations around the contact areas are needed to confirm this hypothesis.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
quote: Regular Middle Paleolithic inventories as well as Middle Paleolithic inventories of Aterian type have a long chronology in Morocco going back to MIS 6 and are interstratified in some sites. Their potential for detecting chrono-cultural patterns is low. The transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic, here termed Early Upper Paleolithic—at between 30 to 20 ka—remains a most enigmatic era. Scarce data from this period requires careful and fundamental reconsidering of human presence. By integrating environmental data in the reconstruction of population dynamics, clear correlations become obvious. High resolution data are lacking before 20 ka, and at some sites this period is characterized by the occurrence of sterile layers between Middle Paleolithic deposits, possibly indicative of a very low presence of humans in Morocco. After Heinrich Event 1, there is an enormous increase of data due to the prominent Late Iberomaurusian deposits that contrast strongly with the foregoing accumulations in terms of sedimentological features, fauna, and artifact composition. The Younger Dryas again shows a remarkable decline of data marking the end of the Paleolithic. Environmental improvements in the Holocene are associated with an extensive Epipaleolithic occupation. Therefore, the late glacial cultural sequence of Morocco is a good test case for analyzing the interrelationship of culture and climate change.
--Late Pleistocene Human Occupation of Northwest Africa: A Crosscheck of Chronology and Climate Change in Morocco Jörg Linstädter, Prehistoric Archaeology, Cologne University, GERMANY Josef Eiwanger, KAAK, German Archaeological Institute, GERMANY Abdessalam Mikdad, INSAP, MOROCCO Gerd-Christian Weniger, Neanderthal Museum, GERMANY
quote: North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two ‘industries’ are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.
--On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, Harold L. Dibble et al. Journal of Human Evolution, 2013 Elsevier.
quote: This paper provides a summary of all available numerical ages from contexts of the Moroccan Middle Palaeolithic to Epipalaeolithic and reviews some of the most important sites. Particular attention is paid to the so-called “Aterian”, albeit those so-labeled assemblages fail to show any geographical and chronological pattern. For this reason, this phenomenon should not be considered a distinct culture or techno-complex and is referred to hereinafter as Middle Palaeolithic of Aterian type. Whereas anatomical modern humans (AMH) are present in Northwest Africa from about 160 ka onwards, according to current research some Middle Palaeolithic inventories are more than 200 ka. This confirms that, for this period it is impossible to link human forms with artifact material. Perforated shell beads with traces of ochre documented from 80 ka onwards certainly suggest changes in human behavior.
The transition from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic, here termed Early Upper Palaeolithic – at between 30 and 20 ka – remains the most enigmatic era. However, the still scarce data from this period requires careful and fundamental revision in the frame of any future research. By integrating environmental data in reconstruction of population dynamics, clear correlations become obvious. High resolution data are lacking before 20 ka, and at some sites this period is characterized by the occurrence of sterile layers between Middle Palaeolithic deposits, possibly indicative of shifts in human population. After Heinrich Event 1, there is an enormous increase of data due to the prominent Late Iberomaurusian deposits that contrast strongly from the foregoing accumulations in terms of sedimentological features, fauna and artifact composition. The Younger Dryas shows a remarkable decline of data marking the end of the Palaeolithic. Environmental improvements in the Holocene are associated with an extensive Epipalaeolithic occupation.
--Jörg Linstädtera, Josef Eiwangerb, Abdessalam Mikdadc, Gerd-Christian Wenigerd, Human occupation of Northwest Africa: A review of Middle Palaeolithic to Epipalaeolithic sites in Morocco
Additional evidence on the use of personal ornaments in the Middle Paleolithic of North Africa
Francesco d'Erricoa,b,1, Marian Vanhaerenc, Nick Bartond, Abdeljalil Bouzouggare, Henk Mienisf, Daniel Richterg, Jean-Jacques Hubling, Shannon P. McPherrong and Pierre Lozoueth
quote:Recent investigations into the origins of symbolism indicate that personal ornaments in the form of perforated marine shell beads were used in the Near East, North Africa, and SubSaharan Africa at least 35 ka earlier than any personal ornaments in Europe.
quote:The first argues that modern cognition is unique to our species and the consequence of a genetic mutation that took place 50 ka in Africa among anatomically modern humans (AMH) (1).
posted
Other posters like AlTakruri or xxyman might have the ability actually formulate a critique of an article in their own words.
However If I put an article, Troll Patrol gets worried about it and feels he has to put up other information in order to take your attention off of the article. And much of it is the same information he has posted ten times or more before. I suppose he thinks he is doing a heroic duty for African people. The idea of neabderthal ancestry in North Africa before recent times is a bad idea. It has to be buried
If I post an article there's no need to read it. It's bad.
Don't even read it just skip ahead to the larger posts made by Troll Patrol. That's the good information
Troll Patrol knows what's best for you.
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
^If someone critiques that article in their own words. You will skip it off as "just someone's opinion".
I have debunked that trash with actual peer reviewed articles.
It's important to repeat these articles I am posting, so people who aren't fermiliar with it can read actual sources, and not just an opinion. Or my opinion. I however, backup my opinion with scientific peer reviewed sources to dispute nonsense claims by Eurocentric's.
It pains your Eurocentric ass. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change
quote:The older occupants have craniofacial dimensions that demonstrate similarities with mid-Holocene occupants of the southern Sahara and Late Pleistocene to early Holocene inhabitants of the Maghreb.
quote:These early occupants abandon the area under arid conditions and, when humid conditions return ~4600 B.C.E., are replaced by a more gracile people with elaborated grave goods including animal bone and ivory ornaments.
quote: Principal components analysis of craniometric variables closely allies the early Holocene occupants at Gobero with a skeletally robust, trans-Saharan assemblage of Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene human populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.
quote:Figure 6. Principal components analysis of craniofacial dimensions among Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.
Plot of first two principal components extracted from a mean matrix for 17 craniometric variables (Tables 4, 7) in 9 human populations (Table 3) from the Late Pleistocene through the mid-Holocene from the Maghreb and southern Sahara. Seven trans-Saharan populations cluster together, whereas Late Pleistocene Aterians (Ater) and the mid-Holocene population at Gobero (Gob-m) are striking outliers. Axes are scaled by the square root of the corresponding eigenvalue for the principal component. Abbreviations: Ater, Aterian; EMC, eastern Maghreb Capsian; EMI, eastern Maghreb Iberomaurusian; Gob-e, Gobero early Holocene; Gob-m, Gobero mid-Holocene; Mali, Hassi-el-Abiod, Mali; Maur, Mauritania; WMC, western Maghreb Capsian; WMI, western Maghreb Iberomaurusian.
--(doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002995.g006)
quote:Craniometric data from seven human groups (Tables 3, 4) were subjected to principal components analysis, which allies the early Holocene population at Gobero (Gob-e) with mid-Holocene “Mechtoids” from Mali and Mauritania [18], [26], [27] and with Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians and early Holocene Capsians from across the Maghreb (see cluster in Figure 6). The striking similarity between these seven human populations confirms previous suggestions regarding their affinity [18] and is particularly significant given their temporal range (Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene) and trans-Saharan geographic distribution (across the Maghreb to the southern Sahara).
quote: Trans-Saharan craniometry. Principal components analysis of craniometric variables closely allies the early Holocene occupants at Gobero, who were buried with Kiffian material culture, with Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene humans from the Maghreb and southern Sahara referred to as Iberomaurusians, Capsians and “Mechtoids.” Outliers to this cluster of populations include an older Aterian sample and the mid-Holocene occupants at Gobero associated with Tenerean material culture.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Other posters like AlTakruri or xxyman might have the ability actually formulate a critique of an article in their own words.
However If I put an article, Troll Patrol gets worried about it and feels he has to put up other information in order to take your attention off of the article. And much of it is the same information he has posted ten times or more before. I suppose he thinks he is doing a heroic duty for African people. The idea of neabderthal ancestry in North Africa before recent times is a bad idea. It has to be buried
If I post an article there's no need to read it. It's bad.
Don't even read it just skip ahead to the larger posts made by Troll Patrol. That's the good information
Troll Patrol knows what's best for you.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: ^^^^ but aren't you are racist who randomly posts photos of white people with skin cancer hoping they'll die?
here are the time periods-
12,000-8 ,000 years ago Capsian Culture
8,000-4,000 years ago, no fossil record of anybody in Maghreb (Show me the fossil record I've been asking you for 2 years)
4,000 years ago to present, - Sea people. Phoenicians,Garamantes, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Turks, Europeans
quote:Therefore, the detected ancient admixture is not due to recent Near Eastern or European migrations. Sub-Saharan populations are the only ones not affected by the admixture event with Neandertals.
--Federico Sánchez-Quinto equal contributor, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals
You're right, let's bury the history of recent invasions and european slaves in the region. People, it actually never happened, what was I thinking, my bad!
quote: "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
The man above is lying people. Yes!
Posts: 22235 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: ^^^ it's an act of deparation.
Anything to distarct you form reading the article and forming your own judgement.
Troll Patrol knows what's good for you. Just skip what I put up.
He checks it out for you ahead of time so you don't have to
You should welcome the articles and papers I have posted, they are a great addition to the subject.
So don't be so subjective.
If you start reading the abundance of articles and papers I have posted, you'll see, that what you've posted is delusional nonsense. Your racist alter ego friend White Nubian had this up as well, and it was debunked back then as well.
Not just that, your ignorant ass has posted that article billions of times. To reinforce your Eurocentric propaganda.
Let's look at some settlement by carriers of the Neanderthal gene. And how this bottleneck intrusion occurred.
Ancient Greek settlements at North Africa.
Ancient History Sourcebook: Procopius of Caesarea: Gaiseric & The Vandal Conquest of North Africa, 406 - 477 CE
"And yet the number of the Vandals and Alans was said in former times, at least, to amount to no more than fifty thousand men. However, after that time by their natural increase among themselves and by associating other barbarians with them they came to be an exceedingly numerous people."
From: Procopius, History of the Wars, 7 vols., trans. H. B. Dewing (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press & Wm. Heinemann, 1914; reprint ed., 1953-54), II.23-73.
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text. In 406 the Vandals advanced from Pannonia by way of Gaul, which they devastated terribly, into Spain, where they settled in 411. From 427 their king was Genseric (Gaiseric), who in 429 landed in North Africa with about 80,000 of his followers.
I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond.
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition.
quote: There is an immense bibliography on the Moriscos, so I can only speak here about two authors. First, Gregorio Maran ̃o ́n, whose Expulsion and Diaspora of the Spanish Moriscos was discovered and published only two decades after his death. Maran ̃o ́n analyses the economic, political, religious, social and cultural causes that contributed to the expulsion of 300,000 people, many of them women, children, and old people; in some parts of the country this amounted to the loss of one third of the population.
[...]
The vast majority of expelled Spaniards had to settle for a new life in the Muslim territories of North Africa. Others managed to negotiate with the Ottoman authorities of eastern Europe, in order to migrate to the Balkans. A decade later an agent of the English government in Morocco reported that he found Moriscos there who ‘complain bitterly of their cruel exile, and desire deeply to return under Christian rule’. The e ́migre ́s from Hornachos settled in what had been the desert town of Rabat in Morocco, and gave it a new life; others settled in Sale ́, just across the river from Rabat.
[...]
The same thing happened in the other cities of Morocco and Tunisia to which the Moriscos emigrated, and where they tried to conserve their religious customs, the style of their houses, their cultural traditions and their music, with the Andalus ́ıes guitar and Andalusian traditional songs still surviving.
Cultural Memories of the Expulsion of the Moriscos José M.
González García
European Review / Volume 16 / Issue 01 / February 2008, pp 91 100 DOI: 10.1017/S1062798708000100, Published online: 25 February 2008
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol: You should welcome the articles and papers I have posted, they are a great addition to the subject.
So don't be so subjective.
If you start reading the abundance of articles and papers I have posted, you'll see, that what you've posted is delusional nonsense.
Your racist alter ego friend White Nubian had this up as well, and it was debunked back then as well.
That is a lie, you are a liar. I was the one who did the most against white Nubian, messages to ausar etc. Your second LIE is that White Nubian posted this article he did You are the one against objectivity you are trying to stomp out a point of view with 12 posts in reaction to it. And Clyde the only one around here who is a proud afrocentrist would have no problem with this article he says the Neanderthals wer black and originated in Africa
But you attack freedom of thought.
You see an article you don't agrre with and then you decide for the forum it's unworthy of being looked at by others. So you make 12 posts of other information, none of them a part of dialogue with anybody.
You assume every other poster would agree with you that this article by professional peer reviewed scientists is delusional and is not worth reading, you read their minds in advance
and it's so wrong and bad you try to do your best to try to get them not even to read it by posting 12 posts to my one, trying to bury it visually. And its imainly information you have posted before and people have read before.
You know what's good for everybody else.
Everything must pass through you before other people read it. And if you don't like it it your childish reaction is to bomb it with text and try to get them not to read it. Other posters are not smart enough to judge for themsleves, They need you to do it for them
You probably were brought up in a dicatorship run country, where the government allows only one point of view and silences other points of view
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote: Ceuta and Melilla: The Last European Colonies in Africa
Contrary to most people’s beliefs that the age of colonialism ended in 1994 with the end of apartheid in South Africa, Spain still to this day colonizes a part of Morocco. The cities of Ceuta and Melilla, along with a chain of small islands off the coast, make-up the lands of the Spanish colony in Morocco. These two cities are the oldest surviving European colonies in the world.
The Moroccan government claims this land belongs to Morocco and considers the land to be under foreign occupation. The Spanish government claims the lands rightfully belong to Spain. The Spanish government insist that Spain has been the historical rulers of these lands. The city of Melilla was conquered by Spain in 1497 and Ceuta was inherited by Spain in 1580, with the union of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies.
In 1912, France and Spain established a protectorate over Morocco. Under this agreement, Spain inherited an area of land stretching from the almost the Atlantic Ocean to Moroccan-Algerian border, and the Western Sahara. In addition, Spain continued its control over Ceuta and Melilla.
In 1956, Morocco gained its independence from France. Spain surrendered most of territory acquired under the French-Spanish protectorate. However, the Spanish government did not surrender the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, instead it insisted that Ceuta and Melilla are not colonies since Spanish people have been living their before the existence of Morocco.
Today, the cities of Ceuta and Melilla are home to about 75,000 people each. The cities attract thousand of people daily. Moroccan laborers and merchants go to and from each city on a daily basis. African immigrants come seeking an easy way to get to Europe since Ceuta and Melilla are officially part of Spain.
In response to the immigration problem, Spain has built three parallel electrified wired fences, reminiscent of the Berlin Wall, to reduce the illegal immigration. The 19 feet high fences are equipped with infrared cameras, tear gas canisters, noise and movement sensors, and control towers. The Moroccan government has objected to the construction of the fences.
In addition, Moroccan nationals have reported that they have been subjected to racism when entering Melilla. In August, Moroccans protesting against racism and police abuse in Melilla, recently conducted a blockage of the border crossing, stopping trucks from making food deliveries into Melilla.
As history has shown, Spain’s refusal to relinquish controlled over all of its territories in Morocco to the Moroccan government will undoubtedly lead to future conflict as European influence continues to diminish worldwide.
quote:However, the Algerians continued their fight against the settlers, and after a massacre of pieds-noirs that killed more than 3,000 French settlers, the majority of the French living in Algeria left the country and returned to France. In 1962, with the French population almost gone, the country was finally granted its independence, a feat which had taken as many as 1,000,000 lives (A Country Study 1993).
--Cultures of the Middle East Professor Abdelrahim M Salih April 17, 2005
French Colonization in the Maghreb: A Central Influence in Both Regions Today
quote: Algeria is a particular case : it is the only French colony where the population of European origin was significant: almost 1 million in 1962 . (see pieds noirs)
History of Morocco - Early History and Colonial Struggles
Early History to the Nineteenth Century
The Berbers have inhabited Morocco since the end of the second millennium B.C. In Roman times the area we know as modern Morocco was roughly contained within the province of Mauretania Tingitania. In the third century A.D. four bishoprics were created in the province. Jewish colonies were also established during Roman rule. The Vandals were the earliest (5th century) of barbarian peoples to overtake the area as the Roman Empire declined.
The Arabs first swept into Morocco c.685 A.D., bringing with them Islam. Christianity was all but wiped out, with only the Jewish colonies retaining their religion. Many Moroccans served in the Arab forces that invaded Spain in the early 8th century. Later, the Berber-Arab conflict fragmented the region.
Morocco became an independent state in 788 A.D under the royal line founded by Idris I. After 900 the country again broke into small tribal states. Warfare between the Fatimids of Tunisia and the Umayyads of Spain for control of the region intensified the already-existing political anarchy, which ended only when the Almoravids overran (c.1062) Morocco and established a kingdom stretching from Spain to Senegal. The Almohads, who succeeded (c.1174) the Almoravids, at first ruled both Morocco and Spain, but the Merinid dynasty (1259–1550), after some triumphs, was limited to Morocco. Rarely, however, was the country completely unified, and conflict between Arabs and Berbers was incessant.
Spain and Portugal, after expelling the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, attacked the Moroccan coast. Beginning with the capture of Ceuta in 1415, Portugal took all the chief ports except Melilla and Larache, both of which fell to Spain. The Christian threat stimulated the growth of resistance under religious leaders, one of whom established (1554) the Saadian, or first Sherifian, dynasty. At the battle of Ksar el Kebir (1578) the Saadian king decisively defeated Portugal. The present ruling dynasty, the Alawite, or second Sherifian, dynasty, came to power in 1660 and recaptured many European-held strongholds. Morocco, like the other Barbary States, was, from the 17th to the 19th century, a base for pirates preying upon the Mediterranean trade.
Colonial Struggles
In the 19th century the strategic importance and economic potential of Morocco excited the interest of the European powers. France, after beginning a war with Algeria, defeated (1844) Sultan Abd ar-Rahman, who had aided the Algerians. Spain invaded in 1860. In 1880 the major European nations and the United States decided at the Madrid Conference to preserve the territorial integrity of Morocco and to maintain equal trade opportunities for all.
Political and commercial rivalries soon disrupted this cordial arrangement and brought on several international crises. France sought to gain Spanish and British support against the opposition of Germany. Thus, in 1904, France concluded a secret treaty with Spain to partition Morocco and secretly agreed with Great Britain (the Entente Cordiale) not to oppose British aims in Egypt in exchange for a free hand in Morocco.
In 1905, after France had asked the sultan of Morocco for a protectorate, Germany moved quickly: Emperor William II visited Tangier and declared support for Morocco's integrity. At German insistence the Algeciras Conference (Jan.–Mar., 1906) was called to consider the Moroccan question. The principles of the Madrid Conference were readopted and German investments were assured protection, but French and Spanish interests were given marked recognition by the decision to allow France to patrol the border with Algeria and to allow France and Spain to police Morocco.
Under the claim of peacemaking, the French steadily annexed territory. In 1908 friction arose at Casablanca, under French occupation, when the German consul gave refuge to deserters from the French Foreign Legion. This dispute was settled by the Hague Tribunal. Shortly afterward in a coup Abd al-Aziz IV was unseated and his brother, Abd al-Hafid, installed on the throne. He had difficulty maintaining order and received help from France and Spain, especially in a revolt that broke out in 1911. However, the appearance of the German warship Panther at Agadir on July 1, 1911, was interpreted by the French as a threat of war and led to a speedy resolution.
On Nov. 4, 1911, Germany agreed to a French protectorate in Morocco in exchange for the cession of French territory in equatorial Africa. Finally, at Fès (Mar. 30, 1912), the sultan agreed to a French protectorate, and on November 27 1912 a Franco-Spanish agreement divided Morocco into four administrative zones—French Morocco, nine-tenths of the country, a protectorate with Rabat as capital; a Spanish protectorate, which included Spanish Morocco, with its capital at Tétouan; a Southern Protectorate of Morocco, administered as part of the Spanish Sahara; and the international zone of Tangier.
The Struggle for Independence
A strong threat to European rule was posed (1921–26) by the the Rif War of Abd el-Krim. In 1934 a group of young Moroccans presented a plan for reform, marking the beginning of the nationalist movement. In 1937 the French crushed a nationalist revolt. Whilst later, Franco's successful revolt against the republican government of Spain began in Spanish Morocco in 1936.
During World War II, French Morocco remained officially loyal to the Vichy government after the fall of France in 1940. On Nov. 8, 1942, Allied forces landed at all the major cities of Morocco and Algeria; on Nov. 11, all resistance ended and in January 1943, Allied wartime leaders met at Casablanca.
During the war an independence party, the Istiqlal, was formed. After the war the nationalist movement gained strength and received the active support of the sultan, Sidi Muhammad, who demanded a unitary state and the departure of the French and Spanish. Vast numbers of Jews emigrated to the newly formed state of Israel in the early 1950s, although a small number remained.
Faced with growing nationalist agitation, in 1952 the French outlawed the Istiqlal and in August1953, deposed and exiled Sidi Muhammad. These measures proved ineffective, and under the pressure of rebellion in Algeria and disorders in Morocco, the French were compelled, in 1955 to restore Sidi Muhammad. In March 1956, France relinquished its rights in Morocco; in April the Spanish surrendered their protectorate; in October Tangier was given to Morocco by international agreement. Spain ceded the Southern Protectorate in 1958.
Modern Morocco
In 1957 the Sultan became King Muhammad V and soon embarked on a foreign policy of “positive neutrality”. After the king's death his son Hassan II ascended the throne. He soon enacted a new constitution that established a two house parliament. Border hostilities with Algeria in 1963 cost both sides many lives and a final agreement on the border was reached only in 1970.
In 1965 a political crisis threatened to undermine the monarchy, in response King Hassan declared a state of emergency and took over both executive and legislative powers. The country returned to a modified form of parliamentary democracy in 1970, with a revised constitution that strengthened the king's authority. Opposition groups, later called the National Front, rejected the constitution and boycotted legislative elections.
Hassan announced a new constitution in February 1972, which lessened the king's powers. In August an assassination attempt took place, when the airplane carrying King Hassan was strafed on its way back from France. The king continued to rule in isolation and maintained relative order through a policy of suppression.
In 1974, Morocco pressed its claim to sovereignty over Spanish Sahara, and in November 1975, Hassan lead the “Green March” of over 300,000 unarmed Moroccans to the disputed region. In 1976, Spain relinquished control of the area, ceding it to Morocco and Mauritania as Western Sahara. However, the Polisario Front, a group of Western Saharan guerrillas with Algerian and Libyan backing, fought for independence for the territory. Morocco took over Mauritania's portion of Western Sahara in 1979 and continued to battle the Polisario throughout the 1980s.
Normalization of relations between Morocco and Algeria in 1988 cut off Algerian support for the rebels, and in 1991 the Polisario and Morocco agreed to a cease-fire. A UN-sponsored referendum to decide the territory's permanent status was ordered for the early 1990s. Disputes regarding who would be permitted to vote delayed the referendum through the 1990s, during which time the region was integrated administratively into Morocco. King Hassan died in 1999 and was succeeded by his son Crown Prince Sidi Mohammed, as Muhammad VI.
Still extremely popular, the new king has revealed himself to be a strong advocate of social change and economic improvement, introducing women’s rights and moving the country closer towards Europe rather than Arabia.
Further Reading S. Bernard, The Franco-Moroccan Conflict, 1953–1956 (1968) R. F. Nyrop et al., Area Handbook for Morocco (1972) R. Le Tourneau, The Modern History of Morocco (1973) W. Spencer, Historical Dictionary of Morocco (1980) E. DeAmicis, Morocco (1984) A. M. Findlay et al., ed., Morocco (1984) D. Porch, The Conquest of Morocco (1986). Soucres: With thanks to Columbia University Press
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol: You should welcome the articles and papers I have posted, they are a great addition to the subject.
So don't be so subjective.
If you start reading the abundance of articles and papers I have posted, you'll see, that what you've posted is delusional nonsense.
Your racist alter ego friend White Nubian had this up as well, and it was debunked back then as well.
That is a lie, you are a liar. I was the one who did the most against white Nubian, messages to ausar etc. Your second LIE is that White Nubian posted this article he did You are the one against objectivity you are trying to stomp out a point of view with 12 posts in reaction to it. And Clyde the only one around here who is a proud afrocentrist would have no problem with this article he says the Neanderthals wer black and originated in Africa
But you attack freedom of thought.
You see an article you don't agrre with and then you decide for the forum it's unworthy of being looked at by others. So you make 12 posts of other information, none of them a part of dialogue with anybody.
You assume every other poster would agree with you that this article by professional peer reviewed scientists is delusional and is not worth reading, you read their minds in advance
and it's so wrong and bad you try to do your best to try to get them not even to read it by posting 12 posts to my one, trying to bury it visually. And its imainly information you have posted before and people have read before.
You know what's good for everybody else.
Everything must pass through you before other people read it. And if you don't like it it your childish reaction is to bomb it with text and try to get them not to read it. Other posters are not smart enough to judge for themsleves, They need you to do it for them
You probably were brought up in a dicatorship run country, where the government allows only one point of view and silences other points of view
As I posted before, you are a Eurocentric racist, who is trying to reinforce divide and conquer tactics.
The dullard white nubian had this same study posted. And was debunked and punked. You were in that thread as well. It's you who is lying, you impersonate the lie, and this is what you are know for on EgyptSearch.
Here is one of theme, the same topic you've posted before. To win your euronut argument.
posted
Got to admit. You two are good was information"mining". Your sources are incredible. Wiki not withstanding.
-------------------- 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: Got to admit. You two are good was information"mining". Your sources are incredible. Wiki not withstanding.
Lioness is waiting for you, to join in the bandwagon of ignorance. Btw, wiki is lioness favorite educational e-learn page.
-- Anwar G. Chejne Islam and the West: The Moriscos, a Cultural and Social History(1993)
Posts: 22235 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Sorry Babe...eh dude. Don't take Neanderthal threads seriously. I have an entire thread on ESR. Also posted on it on the Maasia/Neanderthal/ East Asian thread. I still don't get the intrigue with essentially an ape.
According to 23andME I am 4% Neanderthal. Now isn't that a joke. But they are raking in the cash maybe I am Maasia ....He! He! He! and not a West African slave diasporan.
====
For those insisting on Neanderthal admixture....
A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era
founder effect in Central and Western Europe
Richard Villems2,
Toomas Kivisild11 and Peter A Underhill*,3
....
combined heritage of initial upper Paleolithic colonization, secondary post-glacial mesolithic re-expansions and the Neolithic era demic diffusion of agriculturalists from the Near East.1 Regardless of possibly a minor autosomal contribution, as yet, there is no Y-chromosome evidence of hybridization between Neanderthals and modern human
posted
I am confused....are they suggesting that since Europeans are admixed with a primitive ape and SSA are NOT then that makes Europeans...more "advanced" than SSA. The reasoning and premise defy logic.
You do know that many renowned Scientist DO NOT believe in Neanderthal admixture. The only respectable researcher that holds that belief is Paabo ....the fag. In line with his weird sex habits...butt fougkin. As you can see Underhill. Villems, Kivilds etc think it is ridiculous.
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: Sorry Babe...eh dude. Don't take Neanderthal threads seriously. I have an entire thread on ESR. Also posted on it on the Maasia/Neanderthal/ East Asian thread. I still don't get the intrigue with essentially an ape.
According to 23andME I am 4% Neanderthal. Now isn't that a joke. But they are raking in the cash maybe I am Maasia ....He! He! He! and not a West African slave diasporan.
====
For those insisting on Neanderthal admixture....
A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era
founder effect in Central and Western Europe
Richard Villems2,
Toomas Kivisild11 and Peter A Underhill*,3
....
combined heritage of initial upper Paleolithic colonization, secondary post-glacial mesolithic re-expansions and the Neolithic era demic diffusion of agriculturalists from the Near East.1 Regardless of possibly a minor autosomal contribution, as yet, there is no Y-chromosome evidence of hybridization between Neanderthals and modern human
I know of African American women who had done tests at several companies. And all these individuals all had several different outcomes. These women were of course disappointed and and became distrusted in these type of companies.
The coast of one sample is hundreds of dollars nowadays. In the early in the 90s it was about halve a million if not more. Early this century it still had a coast of many thousands of dollars to tens of thousands. This is why I take some of the early studies done on population genetics with a grain of salt. When they claimed 300 peeps etc. being tested.
Posts: 22235 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
@ Lioness…dude I have to ask you. (1)Did you read the article? (2)Do you understand the article? I don’t understand why publishers such as PLOS One openingly support overtly racist article such as this…especially when it includes a conclusion such as QUOTE{{{{With the current data, however, it is not possible to discard the ancient African substructure hypothesis [8].}}}}” . Lioness do you know what the Ancient African Substructure Hypothesis is? It was posted here; I believe it was the TRex thread on the Neanderthal…one of many.
What is really despicable is when publishers publish papers with comments such as {{{{“IN ANY CASE, our results show that Neandertal genomic traces do not mark a division between African and non-Africans but rather a DIVISION between Sub-Saharan Africans and the rest of modern humangroups, including those from North Africa.”. }}}} Osunds like sour grapes. They did not get the results they wanted. Yet it was published. tsk! tsk!
The authors made their intentions clear. But what the ignorant readers don’t know is there is a genetic divide between ALL ethnic groups. As discussed with A-Ra Ultimate. With increasing K, divisions(sub-structures) will appear. As seen with Northern Europeans and Southern Europeans. Genetics is going to pop their bubble.
You will see at K=4 There is a clear geographic divide. At higher resolution, eg K=99?, there will be a lot more differences observed..
Lioness do you understand the methodology used by the researchers. They openingly admitted they can NOT discard the ancient African substructure hypothesis.
The paper is useless on Neanderthal admixture. BUT!!!!! The pro is….It confirms as I said before…my Tunisians and Beyokus Saharawis are the purest North Africans…whoever they are and whatever they look like. It also confirms Behar and Henn Hypothesis on demographic movements. So here we go again.
BTW – You do you realize that the Tunisians are the closest to the Neanderthals…even more than Europeans and East Asians. And yet Tunisians are the purest North Africans and the furthest genetically from Europeans. What does that tell you?….Tic! Toc!
Waste of time.!!!!
-------------------- 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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posted
You do know that there was a 2012 paper which showed East Asians have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans. Seems like even the Asians want to go ape. He! He!. In that paper a few SSA groups like the Maasia and the interesting Luhya? Also carried Neanderthal DNA….if there is such a thing. Ha!
-------------------- 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
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by xyyman: @ Lioness…dude I have to ask you. (1)Did you read the article? (2)Do you understand the article? I don’t understand why publishers such as PLOS One openingly support overtly racist article such as this…especially when it includes a conclusion such as QUOTE{{{{With the current data, however, it is not possible to discard the ancient African substructure hypothesis [8].}}}}” . Lioness do you know what the Ancient African Substructure Hypothesis is? It was posted here; I believe it was the TRex thread on the Neanderthal…one of many.
What is really despicable is when publishers publish papers with comments such as {{{{“IN ANY CASE, our results show that Neandertal genomic traces do not mark a division between African and non-Africans but rather a DIVISION between Sub-Saharan Africans and the rest of modern humangroups, including those from North Africa.”. }}}} Osunds like sour grapes. They did not get the results they wanted. Yet it was published. tsk! tsk!
The authors made their intentions clear. But what the ignorant readers don’t know is there is a genetic divide between ALL ethnic groups. As discussed with A-Ra Ultimate. With increasing K, divisions(sub-structures) will appear. As seen with Northern Europeans and Southern Europeans. Genetics is going to pop their bubble.
You will see at K=4 There is a clear geographic divide. At higher resolution, eg K=99?, there will be a lot more differences observed..
Lioness do you understand the methodology used by the researchers. They openingly admitted they can NOT discard the ancient African substructure hypothesis.
The paper is useless on Neanderthal admixture. BUT!!!!! The pro is….It confirms as I said before…my Tunisians and Beyokus Saharawis are the purest North Africans…whoever they are and whatever they look like. It also confirms Behar and Henn Hypothesis on demographic movements. So here we go again.
BTW – You do you realize that the Tunisians are the closest to the Neanderthals…even more than Europeans and East Asians. And yet Tunisians are the purest North Africans and the furthest genetically from Europeans. What does that tell you?….Tic! Toc!
Waste of time.!!!!
As a matter of fact that lioness and that paper are postmodern racist.
Best of all, the Neanderthals we've been taught were an insignificant species.
Posts: 22235 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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