Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage

[Juke]

Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage - Nature

Pastoralism spread through cultural diffusion into the Green Sahara, where an isolated, distinct North African ancestry persisted.

www.nature.com

First ancient genomes from the Green Sahara deciphered

A new study reveals a long-isolated North African human lineage in the Central Sahara during the African humid period more than 7,000 years ago

www.mpg.de

While a previous study could not precisely ascribe the ‘sub-Saharan’ component in the Taforalt genome, we now identify this ancestry as a deep North African lineage, with higher proportions found in the Saharan Takarkori individuals. This refines the earlier model, which proposed a dual admixture of Natufian and broadly sub-Saharan African ancestries. Our updated model suggests that the Taforalt ancestry is composed of a 60% contribution from a Natufian-like Levantine population, with the remaining 40% derived from a Takarkori-like ancestral North African population. Notably, both the late Pleistocene Taforalt and the mid-Holocene Takarkori individuals demonstrate equally distant relationships with sub-Saharan African lineages.

Our results showed positive values for Takarkori, indicating that it is genetically closer to Zlatý kůň than to sub-Saharan Africans, including Mota, a 4,500-year-old genome from East Africa. Nevertheless, various African populations with substantial OoA admixture were still genetically closer to Zlatý kůň than to Takarkori

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[Garaad Awal]

Ancient Fulanis/Tobou

 

[Juke]

Ancient Fulanis/Tobou

In the global PCAs they float right above them lol. But in the Africa specific PCAs they're equidistant from modern African clusters.

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[Rayaale]

What did the ANA people look like, are they closer to West Eurasians or Sub-Saharans

 

[Shimbiris]

Beat me to it, you muddifuka. Aight time to lube up and read.

 

[Juke]

As for the study, the models even in the supplementary were dissapointing. None of them had DZU+TKK --> IBM

Also qpADM >>> G25

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[Step a side]

As for the study, the models even in the supplementary were dissapointing. None of them had DZU+TKK --> IBM

Also qpADM >>> G25

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Weren’t the Takarkori 1/3 IBM 1/3 Nilotic related & 1/3 west African related?

 

[Step a side]

Ah I see, so the takarkori women managed to keep the original ana genetic profile intact despite being only 7k years old.

This reminds me of the Tarim mummies that managed to keep the ANE genetic profile intact despite being only 4k years old

 

[Midas]

I'm seeing a lot of wild takes about how this proved ancestral north african are "not african" and are closer to eurasians.

Lots of these guys are having a field day with this

 

[TheLand]

I'm seeing a lot of wild takes about how this proved ancestral north african are "not african" and are closer to eurasians.

Lots of these guys are having a field day with this

Predictable

 

[Fez]

What did the ANA people look like, are they closer to West Eurasians or Sub-Saharans

 

[Blessedserf]

View attachment 358428

The abundance of Arabic and Northern European-sounding names in the study speaks volumes about the motivations behind its publication.

 

[Xareen]

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Misleading.

 

[The alchemist]

There is no way the Takarkori samples are majority "ANA."

Previously, I theorized it could have been actual proto-Niger Congo and early Nilo-Saharans mixing, but I could be wrong. The archaeology somewhat supports this, too.

Either way, Takarkori does not maximize what is essentially the African half of Iberomarusians.

Same model for Taforalt:

There is a clear affinity in whatever is in Nilotics and Yoruba to infer an ANA signature for that DNA.

I think this f4 statistic method is not ideal for African populations. Reminds me of when Kadruka samples, who were half northeast African, had the closest affinity with the Iranian Neolithic.

I know people say G25 is flawed with deep time depths associated ancestral modelling, but I have never seen a result like this. It would never show close distance if it lacked drift with "sub-Saharan African groups." Usually, and it has been 100%, when deep drift is involved, the distance is always high, not this low.

If it is the case that the Yoruba and Nilotic samples used do not reflect actual admixture but instead shared affinity (althgouht that makese no sense based on how Vahaduo behaves), the equidistant measures could mean that this population was the pre-bifurcation of West and northeast African populations, reflecting that OOA really was no different from the bulk of the West and Northerneastern African ancestry. So either way, this notion that it shares no drift with other groups is just untenable; it shares high affinity, in fact.

There is a truly bizarre thing these people have done, in my opinion. This paper should have garnered headlines saying, "Green Saharan individuals show mixture between West, East, and North African ancestry, echoing how the Sahara was a migratory crossroad and refuge, arguably the origins for Niger-Congo speakers" - Instead, they doubled down on the ever implied north-south geographic and racially charged forced distinction between North Africa and "sub-Saharan Africa" (always forcing North Africa to be an extension of Eurasia as it pertains to human population history) where when we in fact have an undeniable population with clear affinity (more than 60% of its ancestry) with the same group they claim they share no drift with, and somehow claim they're closer to Eurasians based on wrong methodology and false interpretation of data.

Their paper itself contradicts their statements. They claim Takarokori samples have no drift with Africans and that they are closer to Eurasians (which in my opinion is just a wrong reading of the data and not ideal processing type use, as stated), but then show how Cushitic groups like Somalis and southern Cushites are closer to Eurasians...

...yet somehow Takarokori lacks drift with Africans? Even if this was just an innocent error (which I am getting tired of these days because it seems they do their worst work when it deals with Africans), they should have picked up on their inconsistencies and how the claims are just not reasonable. How in the world do they do lousy work when they complain about the dearth of aDNA availability?

They contradict themselves more by saying the samples share no drift but quite outwardly claim a dataset for Fulanis (FulaniA) is the closest, a group we can literally perfectly define as Senegambian + Berber....

This is more proposterious than anything I have seen in ancient DNA for a long time, and you can see the cadaans are very silent about this when if this had been done in their interest area, they would have thrown ruckus. Dumbasses are now claiming a people who are 63% indisignuishable from a Yoruba and a Dinka with 3/20 ANA (85% "SSA" (their words, not mine) is now closer to Eurasians... No offence, that is just geographical racial politics at its finest. These fools have for years feigned the notion that ANA was closer to Eurasians, now jump on the stupid bandwagon that Africans in North Africa were Eurasian-like, just to claim that the Sahara was not "SSA" and that it had been Eurasian land, reinforcing this objectively untrue claim that it was a separator during the African Human Period when this paper should have been the one to dispell that. All these people needed to do was to say the obvious but somehow forced a Eurasian-centered narrative... again.

It is so strange because I have read some studies from one of the guys involved in this paper, who worked for Max Planck, and I remember they produced a high-quality paper on Neolithic Turkey. Now these characters are pushing "these people were closer to Eurasian" arguments to a new plateau of disproportionality that now people who have the levels of Eurasians, as African Americans, are considered closer to Eurasians.

The fact that a study from Africa, dealing with African genetics, classifies one highly divergent group as "sub-Saharan Africans" and the other as separate from that should tell you how racial objectives seep unprofessionality into the work. And it has gotten so bad that this scientist, who should easily tell the difference, is desperate not to classify North African Saharan individuals as African when everything indicates as such. Heck, even the PCA should tell it obviously.

I can already imagine some bums somewhere are discussing this, as I've seen it before:

"Uhh, thus us, uuh, Basal Eurasian, the Yoruba and Dinka affinity is Afghani Mujahideen apparitions playing mindtricks on you. These people are Negroid-Caucasians, Moomin ghost. They really are Norwegians in disguise. As a dweeb who goons to Darwins literature (the man who designated me a better evolved ape), my word is law (and I am white). This is just Scandinavians with African characteristics, really just sun-tan, a few Eurasinites who wanted a vacation somewhere in the Oasis somewhere in Broader Western Eurasia, Libya, and accidentally took a selfie appearing fully n-word passing. I dub it, rapid evolution camouflage. Do you hear me, you half archaic Afrocentricus? These are not your forefathers. My Siberian ancestors are closer to them than you! Keep your discussions within your field, in Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa is ou.. Ehm, I mean, there is a sea of desert between you and North Africa. Mixture is impossible, ignore the mixed adapted people that live between, or the Nile, or the African Humid Period, that is irrelevant to the relevant topic. Those mixed people were just transplanted, grafted, and genetically modified (are we sure they're not slaves?) with no history."

These bums come with the most asspull when it comes to African genetics.

 

[The alchemist]

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"Sub-Saharan" groups reflect divergent lineages, while Eurasians are a close genetic cluster that is much more narrow. It's like if South African hunter-gatherer got real ANA but is very divergent on the rest, a drifted tight population from Eurasia that shares drift but is not variable might pop up as closer. Don't take these signals as anything more than deep associations of when Eurasians were Africans instead.

I.e., it tells us who Eurasians relate to within the African diversity, and it also tells us how the other groups contain complexity that sets divergence weakening the signals. That is, this mechanism has a weighing issue.

The fact that these scientists, who knows these things, don’t convey this makes me think they have an agenda. If they don’t know anything about the ancestry of the samples they study, why are they in any position to write rare and exceptional papers about this? Why did they model Taforalt as 60% Natufian and 40 Takarkori. What kind of rookie nonsense is that? And it is a Nature article too.

 

[The alchemist]

You guys should check out the work of an Italian scholar by the name of Savino di Lernia. He is an archaeologist who has spent the most time doing research on those Saharan pastoralists since the 90s.

 

[The alchemist]

"This pattern suggests that no substantial genetic exchanges across the Green Sahara occurred during the AHP or other humid periods preceding the Later Pleistocene. The Sahara, spanning around 9 million km2 and housing diverse biomes, such as grasslands, wetlands, woodlands, lakes, mountains and savannas55,56, probably saw fragmented habitats impacting human gene flow. These ecological barriers, combined with social and cultural barriers, spatial structuring of populations, and the selective adoption of specific practices, may have facilitated the widespread dissemination of similar archaeological features57,58, while limiting extensive genetic admixture. This genetic discontinuity is consistent with modern data, which show substantial genetic differentiation across the Sahara beyond just a geographical gap59. Our findings suggest that sporadic Green Sahara events, particularly before pastoralism, were insufficient to allow for considerable genetic exchange, mirroring the Sahara’s persistent role in limiting human genetic flow, as reflected in both ancient and modern population structures."

It's quite amazing how wrong they are. The samples they had in front of them literally debunk this. And we have plenty of Saharan population that shows this or similar continuity.

 

[Midas]

What's wild is all of these comments on Twitter calling a pouplation that is less eurasian shifted than somalis not ssa.

 

[Midas]

"Sub-Saharan" groups reflect divergent lineages, while Eurasians are a close genetic cluster that is much more narrow. It's like if South African hunter-gatherer got real ANA but is very divergent on the rest, a drifted tight population from Eurasia that shares drift but is not variable might pop up as closer. Don't take these signals as anything more than deep associations of when Eurasians were Africans instead.

I.e., it tells us who Eurasians relate to within the African diversity, and it also tells us how the other groups contain complexity that sets divergence weakening the signals. That is, this mechanism has a weighing issue.

The fact that these scientists, who knows these things, don’t convey this makes me think they have an agenda. If they don’t know anything about the ancestry of the samples they study, why are they in any position to write rare and exceptional papers about this? Why did they model Taforalt as 60% Natufian and 40 Takarkori. What kind of rookie nonsense is that? And it is a Nature article too.

None of the big genetics guys on Twitter are correcting these insane takes. Even that razib khan guy who goes crazy anytime people talk about indo europeans

 

[TheLand]

What's wild is all of these comments on Twitter calling a pouplation that is less eurasian shifted than somalis not ssa.

They also have less Neanderthal than us too which cements this. The entire thesis seemed counterintuitive on the face of it, and the part about cattle domestication seemed kinda odd too.