1st century Nubian mercenary genome from Serbia (Roman Empire)

[Som]

I am in contact with an academic in the know regarding some new aDNA papers on the way and I'm sorry to inform some of you that we have Old, Middle and New Kingdom samples on the way and, so far, they mostly don't look anymore proto-Nilotic than Copts, some even less so:

There is some upcoming data from Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt that I've seen, some of it has been discussed already on the forum. Basically the Old Kingdom samples look North African with a small amount of Seh_Gabi_C-type ancestry, and very little SSA, then during the Middle Kingdom there's a shift towards a SW Asian/Near Eastern profile which resembles that of the few ancient Egyptians we have and present-day Copts, this corresponds with the large influx of "Asiatics" starting from the 1st intermediate period. SSA ancestry also increases in time. Haplogroups so far are E-M35 and J1-P58 (wish there were more resolution, looks like we'll have to sift through the BAM files again).
​

The old kingdom people are probably the so far closest we're gonna get to Horners' non-Yemeni MENA ancestors. Some sort of intermediate in Egypt between Iberomaurusians and Natufians with a little bit of proto-Nilotic. Though I wager our ancestors lacked that Iran-Chalcolithic (Seh_Gabi) stuff. Now, I would never rule out that some ancient Masris on the border with Nubia like in Luxor were more proto-Nilotic for sure but the majority probably were mostly MENA with the only really significant "SSA" in them being "Ancestral North-African" that has mostly survived haplogroup wise in the form of their dominant Y-DNA E-M35.

I definitely agree with you. As I said elsewhere majority of ancient Egyptians was northafrican but there was a sizeable population with Nubian ancestry.
Mots of the egytpian army/ police was medjay , medjays are modern day Bejas. It's up to you wether you consider them egyptian or not but it has to be said that Egypt was to some extent a heterogeneous society

 

[Apollo]

I definitely agree with you. As I said elsewhere majority of ancient Egyptians was northafrican but there was a sizeable population with Nubian ancestry.
Mots of the egytpian army/ police was medjay , medjays are modern day Bejas. It's up to you wether you consider them egyptian or not but it has to be said that Egypt was to some extent a heterogeneous society

They found a Nubian all the way in Serbia. Of course Nubian-like types would be present elsewhere in Egypt, but so far there is no evidence they formed a sizeable population of Ancient Egypt.

Lake Nasser pushed Nubians further north into Egypt in modern times. They barely lived in Egypt before, they are more of a Sudanese population.

It's like Bajunis in Somalia. Barely belonging to the core population of Somalia.

 

[Som]

They found a Nubian all the way in Serbia. Of course Nubian-like types would be present elsewhere in Egypt, but so far there is no evidence they formed a sizeable population of Ancient Egypt.

Lake Nasser pushed Nubians further north into Egypt in modern times. They barely lived in Egypt before, they are more of a Sudanese population.

It's like Bajunis in Somalia. Barely belonging to the core population of Somalia.

The fact a huge part of the army was made up by Nubian soldiers already suggests that they were a noticable minority.

 

[Tewahedo]

I think future data will vindicate the following though I'm interested in seeing otherwise:

• ANA population exists along the Maghreb and maybe across North Africa
• This is an non-Eurasian group that did not participate in the Eurasian bottleneck
• Though their predecessors may have been early close relatives of the proto-Eurasians
• Sometime probably before the Kebaran, Dzudzuana (Anatolian) type HGs expand into North Africa and mix with ANAs
• A basically 50:50 population in terms of auDNA arises but ANA Y-DNA is dominant while Anatolian type mtDNA is dominant
• The descendants of this group, Iberomaurusians (IBMs) expand eastwards into the Levant and are why Natufians and the like have E-M35 lineages
• Then there is another migration out of the Levant due to the spreading of animal and plant domestication, and whatever, probably intermediate between IBMs and Natufians, group living in Egypt gets admixed into with new Anatolian and maybe a little bit of Iranian and Caucasus HG elements due to this and these are the core MENA ancestors of Egyptians, Sudanese, Horners and other East Africans

You have questions about some of the more nitty gritty details involving the archaeological cultures involved like in the Maghreb but I honestly can't go too much into that with any certainty until we have more data. But I do think the expansion into West Asia from North-Africa by IBM types is probably marked by the Kebaran.

Kebaran culture - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"Though their predecessors may have been early close relatives of the proto-Eurasians"

Indeed :

Definitely, the Iberomaurusian specimens are the ones bearing a very high level of basal Eurasian lineage, which could have been contributed by the sub-Saharan African input added by the southwest Asian founder group, which moved to North Africa 20 ka bearing a high basal Eurasian component. It is interesting that the current-day southwest Asian populations that show more genetic sharing with Iberomaurusians are the east AP populations. We tried to disentangle between an ancient link and a bias due to recent sub-Saharan input in this signature by performing the haplotype-based clustering, and confirmed a still high proportion of the basal Eurasian lineage/Iberomaurusian founding effect in clusters D (east AP and Iran) and F (west AP). Probably, the Iberomaurusian specimens are currently the best proxy for the basal Eurasian population group.

Projecting ancient ancestry in modern-day Arabians and Iranians: a key role of the past exposed Arabo-Persian Gulf on human migrations

Arabian Peninsula is strategic for investigations centred on the structuring of the modern human population in the three main groups, in the awake of the out-of-Africa migration. Despite the poor climatic conditions for recovery of ancient DNA human evidence in Arabia, the availability of...

www.biorxiv.org

But wouldn't that mean ANA was a quite different type of deep ancestry and not simply "SSA" ?

If it's really similar to modern SSA ancestry (something like yoruba) then modern North-West africans are around 20-25% SSA.

 

[The alchemist]

"Though their predecessors may have been early close relatives of the proto-Eurasians"

Indeed :

Projecting ancient ancestry in modern-day Arabians and Iranians: a key role of the past exposed Arabo-Persian Gulf on human migrations

Arabian Peninsula is strategic for investigations centred on the structuring of the modern human population in the three main groups, in the awake of the out-of-Africa migration. Despite the poor climatic conditions for recovery of ancient DNA human evidence in Arabia, the availability of...

www.biorxiv.org

But wouldn't that mean ANA was a quite different type of deep ancestry and not simply "SSA" ?

If it's really similar to modern SSA ancestry (something like yoruba) then modern North-West africans are around 20-25% SSA.

IBMs can't be the "best proxy" for Basal Eurasian because the ancestry is mixed. Only the Dzuadzuana-like ancestry, the unmixed Eurasian side of IBMs can potentially have significant Basal Eurasian ancestry. The Dzuadzuana paper claimed it was around 28%.

 

[World]

"Though their predecessors may have been early close relatives of the proto-Eurasians"

Indeed :

Projecting ancient ancestry in modern-day Arabians and Iranians: a key role of the past exposed Arabo-Persian Gulf on human migrations

Arabian Peninsula is strategic for investigations centred on the structuring of the modern human population in the three main groups, in the awake of the out-of-Africa migration. Despite the poor climatic conditions for recovery of ancient DNA human evidence in Arabia, the availability of...

www.biorxiv.org

But wouldn't that mean ANA was a quite different type of deep ancestry and not simply "SSA" ?

If it's really similar to modern SSA ancestry (something like yoruba) then modern North-West africans are around 20-25% SSA.

ANA is definitely African, but I don’t think SSA is the right term to use, rather they are just a population that didn't go through the same main out of Africa bottleneck. Modern Sub Saharan African are just another population.

 

[Tewahedo]

ANA is definitely African, but I don’t think SSA is the right term to use, rather they are just a population that didn't go through the same main out of Africa bottleneck. Modern Sub Saharan African are just another population.

So how should we consider it ? There are lots of discussion regarding it in order to better assess the SSA proportions of North Africans.

I can imagine ANA being a pre-OOA population close to these first eurasians therefore morphologically different than modern SSAs.

 

[World]

So how should we consider it ? There are lots of discussion regarding it in order to better assess the SSA proportions of North Africans.

I can imagine ANA being a pre-OOA population close to these first eurasians therefore morphologically different than modern SSAs.

We don’t know enough about them at the moment.

 

[Tyrannohotep]

I am in contact with an academic in the know regarding some new aDNA papers on the way and I'm sorry to inform some of you that we have Old, Middle and New Kingdom samples on the way and, so far, they mostly don't look anymore proto-Nilotic than Copts, some even less so:

There is some upcoming data from Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt that I've seen, some of it has been discussed already on the forum. Basically the Old Kingdom samples look North African with a small amount of Seh_Gabi_C-type ancestry, and very little SSA, then during the Middle Kingdom there's a shift towards a SW Asian/Near Eastern profile which resembles that of the few ancient Egyptians we have and present-day Copts, this corresponds with the large influx of "Asiatics" starting from the 1st intermediate period. SSA ancestry also increases in time. Haplogroups so far are E-M35 and J1-P58 (wish there were more resolution, looks like we'll have to sift through the BAM files again).
​

The old kingdom people are probably the so far closest we're gonna get to Horners' non-Yemeni MENA ancestors. Some sort of intermediate in Egypt between Iberomaurusians and Natufians with a little bit of proto-Nilotic. Though I wager our ancestors lacked that Iran-Chalcolithic (Seh_Gabi) stuff. Now, I would never rule out that some ancient Masris on the border with Nubia like in Luxor were more proto-Nilotic for sure but the majority probably were mostly MENA with the only really significant "SSA" in them being "Ancestral North-African" that has mostly survived haplogroup wise in the form of their dominant Y-DNA E-M35.

What do you think they mean by "North African"? Do they mean like modern North Africans, or possibly something more similar to sampled Iberomaurusians or early Neolithic Moroccans? Because the latter two populations look quite different from modern MENA people at a genetic and phenotypic level.

 

[tariq moses]

ancient egyptians will be mostly "levantine" related with some dinka related ancestry

 

[Xareen]

a am

A new ancient genome study. It was focused on Serbia, but a Nubian mercenary was detected. He clusters near modern Nubians and North Sudanese Arabs. He carried haplogroup E-V32 (common in Somalis). Can we please stop this false meme that before Islam Nubians and North Sudan were like Dinkas:

Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.458211v1.supplementary-material

Anyone got the G25 coordinates?