In 2005 Dienekes Pontikos had a post up, The mitochondrial time depth of humanity:
It is common to distinguish between Africans and non-Africans, with the former being much more genetically diverse than the latter. But, the real “gap” in human origins seems to be between the really old Africans (“Paleoafricans”) and the rest (“Afrasians”).
The Paleoafrican element is entirely confined to Africa, while the Afrasian one is found in both Africa and Eurasia. Indeed, modern humans can be entirely split into two groups: (i) a group of “pure” Afrasians which includes all non-Africans, and (ii) a group of Afrasian-Paleoafricans which includes all non-Caucasoid Africans. Human groups of entirely Paleoafrican origin, unhybridized with the younger Afrasians are no longer in existence.
Today, a preprint with very sophisticated computational methods of data analysis was posted, Ancient admixture into Africa from the ancestors of non-Africans. The figure to the right shows the proportion of deep “Eurasian” admixture into each major Sub-Saharan African population. Basically this preprint very formally breaks down the high likelihood that Dienekes’ model outlined in the mid-aughts was correct. Even back in 2008, there was an mtDNA phylogeny and coalescence that aligned well with his hypothesis: The Dawn of Human Matrilineal Diversity. Finally, there is the fact Y haplogroup E is dominant among non-hunter-gatherers in Africa, and it is within the “Eurasian-clade” DE.
The abstract of the new preprint makes the genome-wide results pretty clearly in alignment with the older uniparental evidence, as well as some interesting twists that one can infer from population genomics:
Genetic diversity across human populations has been shaped by demographic history, making it possible to infer past demographic events from extant genomes. However, demographic inference in the ancient past is difficult, particularly around the out-of-Africa event in the Late Middle Paleolithic, a period of profound importance to our species’ history. Here we present SMCSMC, a Bayesian method for inference of time-varying population sizes and directional migration rates under the coalescent-with-recombination model, to study ancient demographic events. We find evidence for substantial migration from the ancestors of present-day Eurasians into African groups between 40 and 70 thousand years ago, predating the divergence of Eastern and Western Eurasian lineages. This event accounts for previously unexplained genetic diversity in African populations, and supports the existence of novel population substructure in the Late Middle Paleolithic. Our results indicate that our species’ demographic history around the out-of-Africa event is more complex than previously appreciated.
The reason I put “Basal Eurasian” in the headline is that this is the “ghost population” postulated by the Reich group researchers in the first half of the teens to account for the fact that Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers seem to share more genetically with people such as Oceanians and Han Chinese in some ways that European “first farmers.” More precisely, the early West Asian farmer groups seem to be a mix of a population that is distinct as the “first branch” of non-African humanity, “Basal Eurasians”, and people related to West Eurasian Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The latter place West Asians in the clade with Pleistocene Europeans and early Siberians, as a “western” group, while the former means that West Asians have ancestry that is more distant to Papuans and Amerindians than Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers.
Another thing that notable about Basal Eurasians is there is some circumstantial evidence that this population did not undergo much admixture with Neanderthals. This is important because the authors above report that the dominant signal of admixture between “40 and 70 thousand years ago” didn’t contribute Neanderthal admixture. Additionally, there’s the symmetrical distance from Han and European, which means that the gene-flow predates that divergence. Europeans have some Basal Eurasian admixture, so the symmetry might imply that this admixture is even basal to the Basal Eurasians (a Lazaridis et al. preprint suggests that there might be such a thing), though I’m not sure they have the statistical power to ascertain this. Rather, whatever this back-migration was, it probably doesn’t extend to a population beyond the Near East, and, it was probably just a bit before the massive “Out of Africa” break that happened ~55,000 years ago and is synchronous with Neanderthal admixture that we currently detect.
There are some things to reflect on in light of these data. First, crazy ideas sometimes are true. Reading Dienekes’ 2005 post today is not that exciting. It is quite plausible, perhaps right even. But in 2005 it seemed crazy. The “dogma” of a tree-like phylogeny and explosive “Out-of-Africa” event all over the world was pretty strong then. It was a robust prior and hard to entertain alternative models. But science advances, so here we are.
Second, terms like “Eurasian” and “African” do a little too much work. The ancestral lineages that we are thinking of here may not have been geographically where we assume using the geographical term. There is a good amount of evidence that the ancestors of the non-African lineage went through a protracted bottleneck. But we don’t know where this bottleneck occurred. We call it “non-African,” but perhaps the bottleneck occurred in Kenya? We don’t know. The bottleneck includes Basal Eurasians, so it predated Neanderthal admixture, and the massive radiation ~55-60,000 years ago. The most likely region is probably the Levant and Arabia. Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be lacking the geographic barriers such as a mega-desert or bodies to water to sustain barriers to gene-flow for thousands of years. But “most likely” does not mean overwhelmingly likely.
Preprints like the one above fill in a lot of general dynamics, but I think ancient DNA is going to be necessary to nail down the model tightly.
What can we expect? Honestly, we don’t know, but here is my general sense of what ancient DNA + better methods + more compute time (look at all the simulations!) + non-genetic information (paleontology, paleoclimate, paleo-everything) might tell us. Below is my best guess outline…
- Proto-modern humans diversified in Africa 100 to 200 thousand years ago.
- One branch related to eastern modern humans becomes isolated from other populations 75 to 100 thousand years ago
- This branch is ancestral “non-Africans.” They are probably located in the southern Near East
- But, in southeast Asia, there are other earlier expansions of modern human-related groups, which have mixed with local hominins
- The expansion of the primary non-African group means that most of the signal of earlier Asian “moderns” is gone, though perhaps some of them are responsible for the Denisovan and other archaic signals
- At the same time that the non-basal non-Africans are pushing east, the basal non-Africans are pushing west. The admixture between Basal Eurasians and African hunter-gatherers of various sorts results in the emergence of what we term Africans qua Africans. My working assumption is that the non-African ancestry in hunter-gatherer populations is due to continuous gene-flow from the primary synthetic groups
- Archaic admixture everywhere there were earlier human groups
As Iain Mathieson once said, the story of the last few hundred thousand years is the collapse of old structure.
“At the same time that the non-basal non-Africans are pushing east, the basal non-Africans are pushing west”
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that one group of non-Africans located in southern Near East went back to Africa while the other group spread to Europe/East Asia?
I was the one who first predicted that Y-DNA E in Africa was due to a back migration from Eurasia, over 10 years ago:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2010/03/digging-deeper-into-east-african-human.html?m=1
Glad to see that I may have been correct.
Anyone knows why doesn’t Dienekes post anymore?
too busy doing science
Any particular reason why a population predating the divergence of Eurasians, with no Neanderthal admixture, is most likely to have originated in the Middle East, rather than North Africa or East Africa?
mtDNA L3 is widespread in Africa, and usually assumed to have originated there. Y-DNA DE actually looks slightly older than the ~55 kya bottleneck, and modern Africans at least have some E and D0. While DE or CT may very well have originated in Eurasia, that is mainly based on modern Y-DNA diversity, a rather unreliable indicator. Modern Eurasians having a bit more diversity of CT (C/F/D) clades, which all look to have undergone major dispersals within the past 50 kya anyway, so it’s difficult to conclude where their common ancestors were located. Based on the overall weight of the evidence, I’m more inclined to bet CT/DE originated somewhere in Africa, although a Near Eastern origin remains possible.
Ancient DNA from 50-100 kya Africans and 50-60 kya Near Easterners would be revealing, but might be a long way off. Just finding an early DE in one of these regions would not reveal the direction of gene flow, so we need early samples from Africa and Eurasia.
Any particular reason why a population predating the divergence of Eurasians, with no Neanderthal admixture, is most likely to have originated in the Middle East, rather than North Africa or East Africa?
in general east Africa is what i’m most skeptical of, because it seems like within ‘humid africa’ there was some gene flow between seems. this would inflate Ne. we need some way to keep the population sealed for a long time. desert barrier would work.
north Africa really seems plausible. BUT, the highest % of basal eurasian is in zagros near east.
in general i think east Africa is east likely since ‘eastern africans’ were the group diversifying there. but this is the closest group to the non-africans, so perhaps during the emian they were one population with the non-africans across green Sahara?
@Razib Is he the famous scientist we know from Harvard?
I think Dienekes was more interested in his own pontic greek ancestry. Once he figured that out, he lost interest. That is the sense I got those days. I may be wrong.
I think it’s difficult to compare the different forms of “deep ancestry” between different papers. The models vary a lot, and there is more than one form of “Eurasian-related” basal group. The Dzudzuana preprint for example had Mota, Ancestral North African (the non-Eurasian ancestry in Iberomaurusian that was inferred to be nearly as basal as Mota), and Basal Eurasian all branching off at different points relative to Eurasians. That model like the others is clearly tentative and likely to change significantly, for instance Mota very likely has some much deeper African ancestry, and consequently the rest of his ancestry would be even closer to Eurasians. Really ancient DNA is the only way we’re going to get very solid models.
I agree Paleolithic North Africa seems like the most probable source of “proto-Eurasian” in Africa.
Another additional evidence after models published in 2019 and the papers on Taforalt and Shum Laka, as well as remains from archaic humans from very recent prehistorical time frames (Iwo Eleru). We deal with a migration into most of Africa, that’s for certain, but from where is more difficult to tell. East Africa is out of question to me, so is North West Africa.
The really interesting interaction between Africa and the Near East was happening between Egypt/Nile valley and the Levante, the Southern Near East. Probably we even deal with more constant gene flow there, with no clear border, forming first Proto-Basal Eurasian which radiated out into North and Subsaharan Africa very early, contributing most of the more modern lineages to Subsaharan Africa, especially E1a, and a seceond phase of expansions, more clearly Caucasoid and spreading E1b.
But whether the center was in North East Africa, in the Levante, the Southern Near East or there was gene flow back and forth, is up to future research I’d say.
Like for the PIE debate, its a pity that for some of the most important places and times there are so few good sites and no ancient DNA at all. Like Egypt is for most of its time still an unknown. Yet Egypt is from all of Africa the most important single region for everything, for every advance and development in human biological and cultural evolution. Talking about East Africa, its not just that the ecological barriers are less pronounced, I’m pretty sure that the Nile valley was always one of the demographic hotspots of Africa, being biodynamically of high importance even before the onset of the Neolithic.
Yet I do thing a origin in the Levante/Near East is even more likely, but if its Africa, you have to do research in Egypt. I read that like in some other regions of the world too, the river makes archaeological of research not easier. What was on the shore 30.000 years ago might be very difficult to find, if at all.
So Basal Eurasians are “African” and not Eurasian?
By ancestry, genetially they are Eurasian and where they lived until mixing with earlier humans moving out further North and East is unknown. But the most likely places are North East Africa or the Near East.
The even earlier branch creating modern Subsaharans split off much earlier and again, where they lived is unknown, but highly unlikely it was Subsaharan Africa. Ancestry and places are not fixed. At the time of Basal Eurasians first mixing with other West Eurasians after they branched off before, Neandertals might still have roamed in Europe.
@Obs
“By ancestry, genetially they are Eurasian and where they lived until mixing with earlier humans moving out further North and East is unknown. But the most likely places are North East Africa or the Near East.
The even earlier branch creating modern Subsaharans split off much earlier and again, where they lived is unknown, but highly unlikely it was Subsaharan Africa. Ancestry and places are not fixed. At the time of Basal Eurasians first mixing with other West Eurasians after they branched off before, Neandertals might still have roamed in Europe.”
There are people who have a serious issue with the term “Eurasian”. They want BE to be called African because they believe that Basal Eurasians were merely a very old North or East African population that is related to Taforalt. However, if BE were indigenous North Africans that would make them technically Africans and the label “Basal Eurasians”, would be misleading. Or am I wrong? The thing is that according to those who argue for the “Africaness” of the BE all Europeans are part African due to their BE admixture and there is no such a thing as “Eurasian” genetically speaking. At best Eurasians without BE ancestry could be considered as “proper” Eurasian when assuming that BE were from Africa. Feel free to correct me.
I seem to remember that Dienekes was particularly focused on the idea that Out-of-Africa humans spent a long time cooking in Arabia before exploding out into the rest of the world. While there are still other possibilities (e.g., North Africa), Arabia in particular has always seems especially plausible to me, just from looking at the map. So I like the idea that Dienekes may have nailed it 100 percent.
Just assume the second best option is correct, not the Near East but the Nile valley was home to the Basal Eurasians until they moved into the Levante and mixed with local West Eurasian lineages. Then you could rename this component to “Ancient North East Africans” or “Ancient Nile People” or something the like. This would change little to nothing for their genetic profile and ancestral component, but you could pin them down to a region and actual people, physical remains and a culture.
So far that’s not possible, because we don’t know where exactly the Basal Eurasians and their even more Basal ancestors, which contributed to Subsaharans, actually lived and which contacts they had to other Eurasians.
Since the component is so much closer to non-Africans, Basal Eurasian is probably the best thing to come up right now, since its basically Eurasian ancestry with less to no Neandertal admixture.
Once this ancestral component can be connected, I’m pretty sure it will be renamed anyway, regardless of where they find it.
“and hard to entertain alternative models”
Into Africa.
There is no way to get current hominid diversity from Africa, not even with “Multiregionalism Confined to Africa” as a starting point.
But why are people still pushing Out of Africa? (as if we don’t know…)
1) Marxists, athiests, anti-Abrahamists do not want the Middle East to be the starting point for humanity, sounds too much like the Garden of Eden and Genesis.
Simultaneously, the “I f-ing LOVE SCIENCE!1!” crowd wants the Creationists to be wrong about evolution, except when it comes to hominids – so needless to say they have a difficult position to defend.
2) The Rising Tide of Color and their Anti Racist allies wanted us to believe that we are “all Africans now”; this is a cousin to the idea that Aryans originated in India – a political narrative that has no place in science.
That can make one sad, or happy, or we can just accept it as another fact of life. Moreover, this ongoing process of evolution and our own technology can obsolete us all if we aren’t careful – and we aren’t being careful.
It appears that humdrum gene flow between all hominid ranges gets punctuated every so often by a group that “puts it all together” and then fans out in waves of numerical / physical conquest. Logically, it is easier to do that from the hub position, rather than from the tip of a spoke, and the evidence is growing that Basal Eurasians aka Modern Humans were put together somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean – South East Asia corridor, with only a tiny portion of North East Africa playing a supporting role.
As they radiated out they mixed in modest doses with other hominids, but largely replaced them – an incomplete process that continues today in the farthest flung reaches of the globe.
Does this have any bearing on the current crises of The Panic and the riots? You bet it does. In The Panic, science was whored to a political agenda, and the riots, especially when juxtaposed with SpaceX’s triumphs, give the lie that all contemporary hominids are equally suited for civilized life.
>Europeans have some Basal Eurasian admixture, so the symmetry might imply that this admixture is even basal to the Basal Eurasians (a Lazaridis et al. preprint suggests that there might be such a thing)
So like ANA in north Africans (basal to the basal Eurasians) vs the Eurasian/west Asian Basal Eurasian in Zagros (regular basal Eurasian), correct?
The first thing this paper makes me think of is the suggestion of the “Ancient North African” ghost population from the Iberomaurusian DNA from 2018. IIRC this ghost population was supposed to be basal to Basal Eurasian, but closer to non-Africans than Sub-Saharan Africans, which is right around where the population which admixed into SSA would have to lie.
Of course, Iberomarusians themselves were way too recent to be the source population itself, but North Africa would seem like a good refugium for an isolated population during the glacial maximum. The most recent Green Sahara phase was way too recent to be the time of admixture, and I’m afraid I know little of the climactic history to know if there was a warmer period between 50 and 70 thousand years ago.
Iberomaurusians were mostly West Eurasians with admixture from an unknown, rather basal African population which was probably at the root of Subsaharans. So probably whats closest to “pre-Basal Eurasians”, the early back migration which created modern Subsaharans and living in the Green Sahara before the climate change and West Eurasians proper entered the scene – with Iberomaurusians.
I wonder if this explains why dinka some times cluster close to west africans.
Also could be a population group across both north africa and levant. Dry sahara isolates, green sahara mixes. Rinse and repeat.
Thanks, really love your work here. I’m not a geneticist. I did read David Reich’s book and I’ve read many papers by him and by Paabo. The book was great and I followed it pretty well, the papers, somewhat, but of course, they’re written for specialists.
Are there any further books on this fascinating topic you or your knowledgeable readers can recommend?
@Afterthought
“give the lie that all contemporary hominids are equally suited for civilized life”
Based on the bile you are spouting, this clearly applies to you, rather than the people you hate.
@Dusty: The interesting thing about the Nilotes is that they are in some way closer to West Eurasians, in others further away phenotypically and have more of the older layer sapiens yDNA.
As the for the Green Sahara, it seems the big mixture with old and archaic Subsaharans which created the modern “black” populations in Africa was the result of the Sahara drying, not the wet one. The Shum Laka paper makes this likely, the fairly late entry of this basal African component, which was in the mixture of Iberomaurusians, and its rapid expansion.
I think they lost their habitat to a large degree when the Sahara was drying out and especially the Niger-Kordofan/Bantu expansion was the result. They were on the march in search for new lands and transgressed the ecozones, went with admixture from local, older layers into the tropics. After being adapted, they expanded rapidly on throughout the rest of Subsaharan Africa.
Usually, the herders and farmers they seem to have been already at this point, would have been not that happy adapting to the jungle. They needed a push and pull factor. The push factor was their habitat was under pressure both by climatic change and newly incoming West Eurasian competitors.
The situation was pretty similar to India when the Indo-Aryans came or East and South East Asia when the Han Chinese expanded. Those already more developed groups which came under pressure tried to evade them and adapted the hard way to new habitats, by mixture and adaptation of their toolkit. That way farming, herding and relatively higher cultural packages as a whole spread into so far only sparsely inhabited forager territories in the woods.
I wonder about the archaeological candidate populations for this pre-Subsaharan/Pre-Basal Eurasian population which should have carried E1a in North Africa. They must have adopted farming and herding latest before their expansion, probably practising it far longer in the Green Sahara.
Is this acceptable to say in the current climate? I recall people getting attacked for saying E is not African.
@Lank
“Y-DNA DE actually looks slightly older than the ~55 kya bottleneck,”
Yes, the recent estimates for DE are significantly earlier than 55kya (and not only DE, but also E and D0). Saag et al. 2015 estimate DE’s age at about 73 kya and E at about 69 kya
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381518/
More recently Haber et al 2019 estimate DE at about 76.5 kya (with an upper bound of 86.7 kya and a lower bound of 67.2 kya) and estimates E at about 73. kya. (also in the supplements)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707464/
(CT’s age in both is estimated at about 100-101 kya.)
@Razib Khan
“Europeans have some Basal Eurasian admixture, so the symmetry might imply that this admixture is even basal to the Basal Eurasians (a Lazaridis et al. preprint suggests that there might be such a thing)”
It does seem that it could imply this: that perhaps the admixture in sub-Saharan Africans comes from a population basal to BE, a population such as/similar to the ANA population (indigenous to North Africa) proposed by Lazaridis et al. ANA would not have been “Eurasian”as it would not have descended from Out of Africa migrants, but (being derived from a population native to north/northeast Africa from/out of which the OOA may have occurred) would be closely related to the OOA ancestors of Eurasians/non-Africans (and the ANA or an ANA-like population would also of course be expected to lack Neanderthal admixture). And/or perhaps a continuum of populations existed, ranging from North Africa (and northeast Africa and parts of East Africa) into parts of the Levant/ and/or Arabia, that included both more ANA-like and BE-like groups.
A likely scenario could be one in which an ANA-like population (perhaps an easterly one native to northeast Africa) expanded south and west deeper into Africa) preceding the ca 55-60 kya expansion (a little later) of a similar group also from northeast Africa (or somewhere nearby) into Eurasia.
An origin of this “proto-Eurasian” (or pre-Eurasian) population in East Africa, or perhaps more likely north or northeast Africa does seem plausible.
Yes it’s true Razib – crazy ideas have an element of truth.
I am an African historian and I wrote about this admixture of a very Ancient Levantine people mixing with older Africans in my blog.
The ancestors of modern West Africans were living in the Levant and Europe; with their Y-DNA likely starting off as haplogroup CT and DE before switching into E (after their ancestors left the Levant and began mixing with older humans in Africa).
However, these very ancient Levantines of the CT haplogroup likely had a Melanesian type appearance, and looked nothing like the modern day Levantines who derive much of their lineage from a migration that took place on 12,000BC from Central and West Asia.
That said; Modern day Levantines likely still have a tiny portion of their DNA coming from this very ancient people.
However, the bulk of the ancient pre 12,000 BC Levantine DNA would be in West Africa. They likely survived in their original for even as recent as 15,000 years ago – before being absorbed by West and Central Asian migrants after 12,000 BC.
More so, they were the first farmers of the world and their direct descendants are likely the Efik, Igbo and Bamileke farmers of Southern Nigeria/Cameroon (where Y-DNA DE is found).
Here is the link to my blog
https://amarachi-living.com/blog/black-ancient-egyptians-and-the-first-farmers
It’s also worth checking out another writer who made a similar point to mine was Catherine Obianuju, the author of ‘Eden in Sumer on the Niger’.
Note that we are simply historians and not genetic scientists, so there will likely be errors in our work. Nonetheless, this the history we both have independently researched and come to the same conclusion. Call it ‘Afrocentrism’ or whatever, but this is our perception of history.
@Jatt
You need to read the original study properly. Both DE and E are African.
The Eurasian DNA this study refers to is very old and is found mostly in the Niger Congo people and not in present day East and North Africans who carry recent admixture from West Eurasians. Read the study again.
Also , this Eurasian DNA the study refers to existed long before Neanderthal admixture. Even long before the existence of modern West Eurasians.
Most likely, these ancient Eurasians belonged to haplogroup CT which came from North East Africa or the Levant. The Levant itself was an extension of Africa and the study claims that the admixture did not take place too far from Africa.
It’s also very likely they still resembled the same Africans of today or had an appearance like Melanesians (without the Denisovan and Neanderthal admixtures).
Clearly, they were still very much related to the west Africans of today. West Africans are largely under tested. And these genetic studies keep focusing on the Yoruba. They are better off choosing an ethnic group that lives closer to the Mbuti, like the Bamileke of Cameroon- if they are after more accurate results.
It is not known where the modern DE was and spread from. Right now both North East Africa and the Near East seem to be viable options, possibly even with a genetic continuum.
“However, these very ancient Levantines of the CT haplogroup likely had a Melanesian type appearance, and looked nothing like the modern day Levantines who derive much of their lineage from a migration that took place on 12,000BC from Central and West Asia.”
No, they were already Caucasoid in appearance at that point in time. Check the remains from the Near East and North Africa. The furthest you can go is to state they had Negroid tendencies physically, which some Caucasoid groups further North did largely lack at that time (they had it before too), but that’s it. I won’t go through the remains found, but it should be known.
At 12.000 BC the vast majority of the populations in North Africa and the Near East would have looked similar to the modern inhabitants of the region today.
In Western and Central Africa, even in places without recent West Eurasian admixture of significance, there is a great deal of phenotypical variation and the Shum Laka paper offers the best explanation for this, a large scale, very recent admixture event between highly divergent groups of expanding farmers-herders and local foragers. Obviously farmers did start to expand deeper into West Africa very, very recently, that’s the push I’m talking about and its from an ANA-like population which contributed to the overwhelmingly West Eurasian Iberomaurusians. How exactly they looked before mixing with the local Subsaharans (early moderns and probably archaics like Iwo Eleru) is unknown to me, but I would guess somewhat closer to West Eurasians than after the mixture event.
The Shum Laka paper is really the first step in the right direction to resolve that puzzle, but only that, a first step.
I’m not sure how anyone can claim DE/E is African or Eurasian definitively. We don’t have the ancient DNA to claim that. I remain undecided.
@Sally
What migration occurred from Central Asia to the Levant?
@Obs
“No, they were already Caucasoid in appearance at that point in time. Check the remains from the Near East”
A (proto-Eurasian or pre-Eurasian) population that existed prior to the divergence of East and West Eurasians (and south Eurasians/Oceanians/Australoids) would not have been Caucasoid (unless I’m misunderstanding you). Being basal to all Eurasians (having diverged prior to 50 kya, long before) – and possibly not even Eurasian at al but perhaps more ANA-like – they likely would likely have, in some general way, resembled Melanesians (or Andamanese, or some other similar population, or some sub-Saharan groups). Austalo-Melanesians are also descende from the same OOA branch as other Eurasians but retain a vaguely/superficially African appearance because their ancestors never adapted to cooler climates (as did the ancestors of “Mongoloids” or “Caucasoids”, the latter descending from temperate-adapted Dzidzuana-like peoples possibly from the general Caucasus region). East Asians/Mongoloids and Australo-Melanesians belong to the same broad “Eastern” branch (with the ancestors of the former having migrated northward and the latter south and further southeast into Oceania).
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/03/26/version-alpha-of-trying-to-understand-east-asian-population-history-is-now-out/
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/03/30/the-deep-origins-of-east-eurasians/
You wrote:
“…and its from an ANA-like population which contributed to the overwhelmingly West Eurasian Iberomaurusians. How exactly they looked before mixing with the local Subsaharans (early moderns and probably archaics like Iwo Eleru) is unknown to me, but I would guess somewhat closer to West Eurasians than after the mixture event.”
The Iberomaurusians were not overwhelmingly Western Eurasian. According to Lazaridis, they had a roughly equal mixture of West Eurasian and ANA ancestry. The Iberomaurusians may have had a somewhat West Eurasian-influenced apoearance (being half West Eurasian), but the ANA would not have (the ANA being basal, not only to West Eurasians, but all Eurasians including Basal Eurasian/BE). The ANA population would seem likely to lack traits seen unique to colder adapted Eurasian groups (such as “Caucasoids” or “Mongoloids”) and would have instead appeared “African” in a general sense despite being genetically distinct from other (sub-Saharan) African groups (just as many sub-Saharan groups are distinct from each other: e.g. West Africans, Pygmies, the Hadza/Sandawe, the Khoisan, Nilo-Saharans/Nilotes, etc.). And just as Eurasian populations whose ancestors have allways remained in warm climates/the tropics (e.g. Melanesians, the Andamanese, Papuans, Aboriginal Australians, southeast Asian Negritos, etc) also retain various hot weather/tropical “African” traits that the first Eurasians and pre/proto-Eurasians would have had (coming from Africa) that were later lost by some groups in colder/cooler climates (such as dark skin, some tendency to certain broader facial features, and in many cases tightly curly/kinky hair).
The ANA population seems likely to be associated with the Aterian culture known from archaeology (native to North Africa) prior to the West Eurasian back-migrations (of ca 25-30 kya) that produced the Iberomaurusians.
(Nor is it clear that farming came to West Africa from an ANA-like population. It seems to have occured locally/with indigenous crops: in the West African sahel/savannah in the case of millet,sorghum, African rice, fonio, etc; and in in the northern regions of the West Afican forest in the case of the African yam and oil palm.)
@Obs, you said”
“No, they were already Caucasoid in appearance at that point in time. Check the remains from the Near East”
Which remains of the Near East are you referring to that were ‘fully caucasian’?
The ancient Eurasians the study claims West Africans mixed with were from 70,000 -40,000 BC, and existed before the divergence of modern Eurasian haplogroups. So, in other words, they lacked DNA from modern-day West Eurasians. They were definitely not Caucasian – they were most likely Melanesian looking. You need to read the study again.
Also, don’t confuse the East African and West African admixtures – East Africans are the ones mixed with Caucasian modern West Asians. However, this particular study is linked to West African admixtures (Niger-Kordofan) people, who mixed with a very ancient population whose DNA is also found in the Han Chinese and French.
This does not mean West Africans are mixed with Caucasians or Chinese. They are mixed with that ancient population whose DNA is also harbored in both the French, Chinese, and also likely in the Papuans (minus the Denisovan admixtures). So, these very ancient people were not Caucasian at all.
Also, the study clearly notes that the migrating population that formed the West Africans lacked Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry carried by modern Eurasians.
”No Evidence for Excess Neanderthal Ancestry
Previous studies have proposed that a backflow from Eurasia may have brought Neanderthal ancestry into African populations [57]. To assess whether the proposed Late Middle Paleolithic back migration might have introduced Neanderthal material, we analyzed a Yoruban and a French individual using SMCSMC to draw a sample from the posterior distribution of ARGs, isolated the marginal trees containing an inferred back-migration event in the epoch 30–70kya, and reported the inferred admixture tracts (“segments”, Supplementary Section S4). To assess whether the identified segments are plausible, we confirmed that their length distribution is consistent with IMF and timing of the migration inferred by SMCSMC (Supplemental Section S4.1, S11), and, as expected, we found that these African segments with putative Eurasian ancestry tend to be more closely related to a Eurasian sample than another representative of the same African population (Table S5, Supplemental Fig. S12, S13) in a global dataset of modern and ancient individuals compiled by the Reich group (see URLs). Within these African segments that are likely enriched for material with Eurasian ancestry, we then used D statistics [13] to identify enrichment for Neanderthal material compared to an African background. We find no evidence for gene flow with a Vindija Neanderthal on the Mbuti baseline, or when compared to a different Yoruban (Table S6, S7). We additionally find no evidence for increased affinity to the Vindija Neanderthal when compared to the Altai, as would be expected if the material were descended from admixing Eurasians (Table S8). However, we find that restricted to the identified segments, D statistics have power to detect evidence for the known admixture from Vindija into a French individual (Fig. 4), suggesting that lack of power does not explain the lack of evidence we find for Neanderthal admixture into Africans. In addition, we find no differences in affinity to Neanderthals or Denisovans between the variants which fall in segments and the whole genome (Fig. 4d). Taken together, this suggests that Eurasian-derived segments of the African genomes are not enriched with Neanderthal material.”
I spoke of the MENA zone in 12.000 BC being Caucasoid.
As for the appearance of ANA I doubt they were like Australo-Melanesians which seem to have secondly adapted to their current habitats, stem from an early, cut off branch and have significant archaic admixture. My guess is Basal Eurasians were better connected again, early on, to West Eurasians. That’s why this ancestral component might be widespread in WEA even 30.000 years ago.
Similarly modern Subsaharans show more derived traits which most certainly come from their ANA-related, more recent ancestry, while some of the more basal and tropical features are more likely to have come from earlier moderns and archaic local populations which they mixed with when moving South.
So I think the ANA-related source group was rather unique, unlike most current Africans, probably between modern Caucasoid and Negroid in appearance.
We have the proof for herding cultures in the Green Sahara. That’s what they could have been.
The domesticated plants you mentioned are part of the package they developed in the borderzone to adapt to the tropics. But I’m sure they started this adaptation with the knowledge for domestication and a toolkit they got from the North.
Like rice cultivation in India by the Indus people, which just shifted from the crops they used before.
The whole Niger-Kordofan/Bantu expansion happened very late and very fast because of this. Before the expansion from the North/Sahara most inhabitants will be found to be yDNA A/B foragers. At 10.000 BC its highly likely primarily archaics like Iwo Eleru lived in the tropical jungle of West Africa. Then came early modern foragers (A/B), then ANA-like (E1a) agro-pastoralists and finally (E1b/R1b) West Eurasian proper pastoralists.
@Obs
“Australo-Melanesians which seem to have secondly adapted to their current habitats, stem from an early, cut off branch and have significant archaic admixture.”
Australians, Melanesians, and Papuans have significant Denisovan admixture at about 4-5% (and there is no evidence that it has influenced their appearance). But the Andamanese and the more westernly southeast Asian Negrito groups do not have Denisovan admixture (or in the case of western Negritos, may only have traces) (The AASI would have lacked it as well.); they only have Neanderthal admixture (as all other known Eurasian groups do, except possibly for BE/Basial Eurasians, assuming that BE was Eurasian)
And Australo-Melanesians are not necessarily an especially early branch. They seem to have diverged from a common branch with Eastern Eurasians (see the links in my last post), and in either case (early branch or not) seem to have retained some older features (having never migrated into temperate or cold regions).
I would agree, of course, that by ca 12,000 BC Middle Easterners were Caucasoid/basically Caucasoid, or mostly so (Dzuzuana-like peoples had by then (and before then) spread all over Europe and the Near East and mixed substantially with the native ANA peoples of North Africa).
I don’t see any reason to imagine that the ANA would have has Caucasoid tendencies (since they were basal to all Eurasians). Also, the herders of the Green Sahara (or most) would not likely have been fully ANA (I doubt fully ANA groups still existed at that time; some may have had substantial ANA ancestry, but significant admixture from sub-Saharans and/or West Eurasians (depending on the region) seems likely.
Edit: “(Dzuzuana-like peoples had by then (and before then) spread…”
On the other hand, I suppose it’s perhaps possible that fully or predominanty ANA peoples existed in the southern Sahara/northern Sahel at the time, but most likely we’ll only know through ancient dna.
@Obs
“Australo-Melanesians which seem to have secondly adapted to their current habitats, stem from an early, cut off branch and have significant archaic admixture.”
I am fully aware that Melanesians have archaic Denisovan admixture, hence why I said they ‘looked’ like Melanesians.
Also, in my original comment, the people I was referring to who looked Melanesian was the original haplogroup CT carriers of the Levant, who likely still survived in their original form (even as early as 15,000BC) prior to the arrival of modern West Eurasians. Much of the old haplogroups of Africa have been absorbed by back migrants – with CT being the first to disappear from the Levant.
Also, I do not think haplogroup CT looked Caucasian, but yes the 12,000 BC migrants were Caucasian. And very likely, the Eurasian DNA that West Africans are harbouring is likely linked to CT and not the modern Eurasians.
Carriers of CT were certainly a Melanesian-looking people (who lacked the Denisovan and Neanderthal admixtures).
And by the way, Niger Congo people do not look Caucasian whatsoever – they are very robust and muscular whilst modern West Asians are extremely gracile. This is was certainly an admixture that came from Melanesian/Papuan type people.
@Obs – you also mentioned
”We have the proof for herding cultures in the Green Sahara. That’s what they could have been.
The domesticated plants you mentioned are part of the package they developed in the borderzone to adapt to the tropics. But I’m sure they started this adaptation with the knowledge for domestication and a toolkit they got from the North.”
The herding cultures of the Sahara do not go any further back than 10,000 BC and originated in the Near East. There is no evidence whatsoever of domestic herding in Africa beyond 10,000 BC. Again, you are confusing the ancient DNA found in West Africans with the modern West Asians who mixed with East Africans.
West Africans are not herders – East Africans are. The only herders in West Africa are the Fulanis who originate in East Africa. Fulanis are very recent immigrants in West Africa.
Other West Africans have never been herders. Herding was a culture that entered the African continent with the Nilotic of the Near East, as well as the R1b and E1b1b folks.
This particular study is referring to an entirely different Eurasian population that mixed with West Africans (who are largely farmers).
This admixture likely led to the formation of Y-DNA DE. Mind you, DE is found in Southern Nigeria and nowhere else in West Africa. Southern Nigerians are strictly farmers and not herders.
@Sally
At this stage, there seems yet no reason to assume the admixture came from the Levant/Near East. North/Northeast Africa seems just as likely (or more likely) (or the admixture could have come from a continuus population group (population continuum) spread from northeast Africa into the Near East/Levant, with its northeast African wing migrating deeper into Africa and admixing with other Africa populations).
Since the admixture shows no special affinity to West Eurasian (who have Basal Eurasian/BE admixture) it seems could be more likely to come from a group more basal than BE, like ANA which would have diverged/originated (at least mostly) in North Africa. Also, since Neanderthals inhabited the Levant, a group from there would be expected to have Neanderthal admixture (BE may have lacked it because it came from Arabia where Neanderthals seem not to have settled, or because BE too pehaps orginated in northeast Africa rather than Eurasia.
@Jm8
I agree that the admixture likely came from North East Africa, however, what I am trying to say that there is a high chance this ANA population also spread into the Levant and some of them would have migrated back into Africa from the Levant.
What was the phenotype of the Basal Eurasian admixed people found in the Zagros?
@Sally: “Australians, Melanesians, and Papuans have significant Denisovan admixture at about 4-5% (and there is no evidence that it has influenced their appearance).”
There is so far little evidence, granted, but there are speculations based on their phenotype, even in the old anthropological literature, which considered archaic admixture the reason. It is “out of date” now, but the facts and differences remain. If there is honest research going on for decades from now, correlating ancestral genetic segments with phenotypical variation, I guarantee you that they will find traits transmitted by archaic admixture in Australo-Melanesians. The Neandertal admixture in West Eurasians is much lower, yet a whole list of traits, at least frequency traits, can be attributed to this admixture.
“Melanesian looking” is no viable category in this context and I don’t agree, especially not for the the later phase, especially not for the time after the LGM.
“And by the way, Niger Congo people do not look Caucasian whatsoever – they are very robust and muscular whilst modern West Asians are extremely gracile. This is was certainly an admixture that came from Melanesian/Papuan type people.”
The first Caucasoids which came to North Africa were very robust and no, Negroids are not generally more robust. Also robust vs. gracile is a trend which can change faster than detail traits.
The reality is we deal in modern Africa with 3-4 phenotypical gradients, one is the centre of Negroid in West Africa, the other is Caucasoid in North and East Africa, the third are Pygmy and Khoisan. Closest to the pre-ANA-like people’s expansion are the Pygmies. But even those have a substantial admixture from the more recent immigrants, making them a mix too.
But if you extend the gradient between West African and Pygmy at both extremes, you end up in an unique, yet somewhat more Caucasoid shifted, rangy and not that robust variant at one end, and a people with a rather archaic and very tropical at the other.
That’s because the core group of the West African/Negroid people, the most likely ANA-like ancestral component, being adapted to the still green Sahara-North Africa initially, not the tropics, which were inhabited by first to second wave modern humans and archaics.
The West African tropical zone was never a demographic centre from which a large modern human population could push out. It only became accetable territory for larger populations and higher culture with the adaptations of the agro-pastoralists. Before that it was a dead end with some of the longest surviving archaics most likely.
“The herding cultures of the Sahara do not go any further back than 10,000 BC and originated in the Near East. There is no evidence whatsoever of domestic herding in Africa beyond 10,000 BC. Again, you are confusing the ancient DNA found in West Africans with the modern West Asians who mixed with East Africans.”
I do not. There seems to be no E1a and no modern Negroid population before the entrance of the herders and farmers from the relative North. In some parts there were probably not even modern Homo sapiens of any kind, but still archaics.
“This particular study is referring to an entirely different Eurasian population that mixed with West Africans (who are largely farmers).
This admixture likely led to the formation of Y-DNA DE. Mind you, DE is found in Southern Nigeria and nowhere else in West Africa. Southern Nigerians are strictly farmers and not herders.”
Completely agree. But that we have DE in Southern Nigeria now doesn’t tell you where they were before the farmers expansion. Most likely, they were just part of the migration which led to the rapid expansion of E1a throughout Africa. Where do you think they came from? Nigeria originally? Hardly so.
@JM8: The really important aspect is the ANA-like were closer to West Eurasians than to the Subsaharans (early modern, archaics) before the expansion and Basal Eurasian was connected to West Eurasian for tens of thousands of years, we deal with two quite distinct, long diverged branches with different admixtures and trajectories, yet not that different as later Subsaharans after their path into the tropics and the local admixture.
“Since the admixture shows no special affinity to West Eurasian (who have Basal Eurasian/BE admixture) it seems could be more likely to come from a group more basal than BE, like ANA which would have diverged/originated (at least mostly) in North Africa.”
It was just an earlier back-migration/West expansion. Agreed they formed and developed their own unique characteristics in North West Africa, the Green Sahara.
Aterian is a wide term, I wonder whether it can get more specific and whether we can pinpoint where the transition from foraging to a productive economy under the influence from the Near East took place.
@Obs
Regarding Australo-Melanesians/South Eurasians, as mentioned, some (Australians, Papuans, and Melanesians) have Denisovan admixture, but others (Andaman Islanders and, for the most part, Western SE Asian Negritos) do not have it. All have hot weather-adapted phenotypes. Denisovan admixture would not be the cause of that, even in the groups that have it, whatever else it might have influenced. Their physical traits (brown/dark skin, curly hair, and a tendency toward broad features) would more likely be a retention (due to their remaining in hot climates since the OOA) from the common African origin of pre-Eurasians, also retained by the various disparate sub-Saharan groups, and later lost/modified in the Eurasian branches that went north.
You wrote:
“The really important aspect is the ANA-like were closer to West Eurasians than to the Subsaharans (early modern, archaics) before the expansion and Basal Eurasian was connected to West Eurasian for tens of thousands of years.”
ANA is not closer to West Eurasians in particular. It is close to Eurasians in general (also including Eastern Eurasians and Oceanians) and is basal to all of them, because it represents a population especially close to the common ancestors of (what would later be) Eurasians before they left Africa (likely northeast Africa). BE, though somewhat less basal than ANA, also was apparently no closer to West Eurasians than any other Eurasian group at least initially (though it became mixed with West Eurasians later).
Obs:
“Aterian is a wide term, I wonder whether it can get more specific and whether we can pinpoint where the transition from foraging to a productive economy under the influence from the Near East took place.”
Aterian is a somewhat wide term, and is applied to the pre-Western Eurasian back-migration cultures of North Africa (including both much of northwest Africa/the Maghreb to much of northeast Africa) with variius commin tool types. The Aterian lasts from about 150 kya (I believe) to about 25 kya (after which West Eurasians arrived in the Maghreb and northeast Africa (hybridizing with the locals) and the Iberomaurusian (and similar cultures) began.
The end of the Aterian and beginning of the Iberomaurusian was not the beginning of food production in North Africa. The Iberomaurusians were still hunter-gatherers and the people of the region remained so until after the end of the Iberomaurusian and well into or after the succeeding Capsian period (which perhaps was associated with the later Mesolithic/early Neolithic arrival of Afro-Asiatic peopples from the Levant). West Asian crops (wheat barley) and livestock then arrived from the Levant later, in the Neolithic.
Herding in sub-Saharan Africa likely did derive from indirectly/ultimately from Neolithic Near Eastern cattle culture. But the beginning of farming (in West Africa), a separate event, was more likely associated with local sub-Saharan or more likely mixed ANA/sub-Saharan peoples of the Mesolithic West African savannah/sahel (significantly south of the Maghreb) domesticating indigenous African crops.
It would indeed be interesting (as Aterian is a somewhat wide term) to begin to distinguish the range of various Aterian/Aterian related cultures (likely associated with ANA and ANA-like ancestry) that existed from the Maghreb through northeast Africa and perhaps into parts of the nearby Near East (where populations may have perhaps gradiated into BE) as well as the associated genetic spectrum of populations.
@Obs – You wrote
”The first Caucasoids which came to North Africa were very robust and no, Negroids are not generally more robust. Also robust vs. gracile is a trend which can change faster than detail traits.”
I am sorry but I had to laugh at this statement. How can ‘Caucasoids’ be robust and gracile at the same time? Caucasoids have a distinct skull type and the negroids have their own.
Fact is – Southern Nigerians show more affinities with Melanesians phenotypically. With the exception of their hair, it’s very hard to tell a Melenaesian apart from a Southern Nigerian/Cameroonian. Even if their genes are world’s apart, it’s obvious the ancient population that entered Africa were of a Papuan/Melanesian stock and not Caucasian.
What’s funny is that you seem to think that Africans are either Pygmie or Caucasian, which is a very one-directional way of looking at Africans. The diversity of African phenotypes goes beyond Caucasian or Negroid;
Certainly, there is a missing link. The southern Nigerians and Bantus stand out as extremely Melanesian in origin (minus the Neanderthal and Denisovan admixtures that likely contributed more to the difference in hair types of Melanesians and Africans).
I am also guessing it was the Denisovan admixture in Melanesians that diverged the genes of Southern Nigerians from Melanesians and Papuans. Even the study hinted this;
”However, up to 5% of the genomes of some present-day Papuans have been suggested to derive from archaic introgressions [37], and these contributions will have reduced the inferred levels of admixture into Africans when using Papuans as a representative of the Eurasian ancestors. The alternative explanation, of an earlier divergence of Papuans and Eurasian ancestors, is possible but contested; in light of documented Eurasian admixture into Oceania, the effects of this early isolation are likely to be small relative to the large confounding effects of Denisovan admixture [34, 40].”
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.127555v1.full
I am 100% certain these Eurasian people that mixed with West Africans between 70,000 -40,000 years ago were looking more like Melanesians/Papuans (minus the Denisovan admixture).
You can keep screaming ‘caucasian’ as much as you want. It won’t change the fact that Southern Nigerians still resemble Melanesians and Papuans more than they resemble Caucasians. It just happens that Melanesians are of the haplogroup C clad, and Southern Nigerians show up as DE. The obvious connection can’t be overlooked.
@Obs
“That’s because the core group of the West African/Negroid people, the most likely ANA-like ancestral component, being adapted to the still green Sahara-North Africa initially, not the tropics,”
The green Sahara at that time would have resembled/been similar to the (often semi-arid) Sahel and Savanna regions of Africa today (sahel/savannah-like terrain then extending into/including much of what is now desert) whose people (in the Sahel/Savannah have a range of “Negroid” phenotypes, and would have been for the most part hot and sunny (as it generally is today). And those adapted to the green Sahara in that period (the ANA) would be expected to have shared/also had the kinds of hot weather (“tropical”) adaptations common to humans prior to the OOA (and found/retained in Southern Eurasians like the Andamanese and Australo-Melanesians (despite their being genetically distamr from Africans), whose ancestors like those of other Eurasians, once lived in and left Africa through the green Sahara/northeast Africa, as well as, in a loose and general way, in the whole range of not-particularly-related sub-Saharan groups from West Africans to Pygmies, to Hadzas, to the Khoisan). Of course, that doesn’t mean the ANA looked exactly like any modern SSA group (Andamanese and Australo-Melanesians certainly don’t, nor do SSA groups look exactly like each other), and they surely has local particularities, but, being as basal as the ANA were, one would not expect them to have had Caucasoid traits (which seem to have begun to form later in Western Eurasia in proto-Western Eurasians).
The current inhabitants of the Sahara/North Africa for the most part, of course, mainly descend from West Eurasian back-migrants (and today have only little ANA ancestry), and thus would resemble West Eurasians much more than they do ANA (or even BE) peoples.
But I agree that robusticity is not an especially good indicator, as Negroids are not necessarily especially robust (and as you mentioned, many early Eurasians were).
It might be interesting to test modern southern Saharan groups with relatively less Eurasian admixture for ANA ancestry.
@Jm8 – You wrote
”But I agree that robusticity is not an especially good indicator, as Negroids are not necessarily especially robust (and as you mentioned, many early Eurasians were).”
It depends which negroids you are referring to. I am from West Africa (Nigeria to be exact), and I can tell you southern Nigerians are extremely robust in comparison to Northern Nigerian Fulani and Hausa (who are mixed with Caucasian).
The phenotypical variation in Nigeria alone is immense. Even amongst the Igbos alone, the variation is immense. Southern Nigerians are in no way caucasian. There was another ancient Eurasian group – and they were certainly of a Melanesian-type peoples. Caucasians were not the missing link.
Yes, the Senegalese, Fulanis and Hausas look mixed with Caucasians – but there is something else in the Southern Nigerians and Bantus.
This is why I keep saying – they need to test the Bamileke and Igbo. But they keep using the Yorubas who have heavy admixture from Hausa.
@Sally
“Southern Nigerians show more affinities with Melanesians phenotypically. With the exception of their hair,”
Melanesians (barring Austronesian/East Asian admixture) usually have kinky/kinkier hair also (as do Papuans, un-mixed SE Asian Negritos and Andaman Islanders generally). It’s Australian Aboriginals that tend toward a looser hair type (though Tasmanian Aboriginals also have/had a more tightly curled hair texture).
@Jm8: Tropical forests with their humid climate, flora and fauna, are a very different habitat than the one provided by the Sahara zone. Agree with the rest.
@Sally: They where in some ways “more Papuan looking”, granted, because like them they were an early offshot from the modern population centres, but they were also quite different in other ways, a unique phenotype, at least at the point they expanded into SSA.
And Pygmies are just quite different too in some ways, yet a related ancestry is integral for modern Negroids. If you subtract these tendency you end up with a phenotype probably closer to other populations.
But that doesnt have to be, we need to find actual remains and genetic samples to know what they really looked like.
@Sally
“Yes, the Senegalese, Fulanis and Hausas look mixed with Caucasians – but there is something else in the Southern Nigerians and Bantus.”
Fulanis have recent West Eurasian admixture (something like 10-25%) I believe from Berber-like peoples. And the Hausa generally seem to have less West Eurasian (but they have some; and they are Afro-Asiatic speakers and sometimes carry R1b). But I don’t think Caucasian admixture is the main reason for their relative gracility; most/more of it may be local adaptation and variation (the West Eurasian proportions are fairly small). You are right that West Africans are very diverse including among those with no West Eurasian admixture and even within ethnic groups (like the Igbo).
And regarding Senegalese (the large Wolof ethnic group for instance at least) have little to no Caucasian admixture and speak a Niger-Congo language (of the Atlantic branch) not an Afro-Asiatic one. Many gracile/non-robust types (as well as robust ones) can also be found among the various Niger-Congo (and Nilo-Saharan) peoples of the western (and central) Savanna and Sahel (among many Mande ethic groups in/around Mali for instance).
“But they keep using the Yorubas who have heavy admixture from Hausa.”
Are they using northern Yoruba? I don’t think that’s true of the Yoruba generally, but of some northern subgroups I could perhaps see that being true.
I still would maintain that what is in the south Nigerians and Bantus (and most other Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan peoples) is (generally) more likely to be ANA ancestry from/native to northeast Africa (which is related to proto-Eurasians) rather than a Eurasian population per se from the Levant (or Arabia). But we can’t yet be certain. Perhaps time, more studies, and more ancient dna will tell.
@Jm8.. You wrote
”I still would maintain that what is in the south Nigerians and Bantus (and most other Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan peoples) is (generally) more likely to be ANA ancestry from/native to northeast Africa (which is related to proto-Eurasians) rather than a Eurasian population per se from the Levant (or Arabia). But we can’t yet be certain. Perhaps time, more studies, and more ancient dna will tell.”
I 100% agree with you. But like I said in the beginning, they originated in North East Africa but also had an ancient presence in the Levant. To assume they did not step into the Levant in their 70,000 years of existence is what I don’t agree with.