Big aDNA Update

[The alchemist]

The Nubian DNA from the long-awaited Balkan Roman study was delayed for two years plus since the drop of pre-print is out:

The study claims he was passingly modeled as Kenyan Iron Age with Kulubnarti Christian Nubian profiles. We can interpret this as exceeding Cushitic DNA than those Medieval Nubians in addition to a Nubian structure. I assume it was 60% Cushtic.

Pre-print PCA (they excluded Kulubnarti plotting on the published paper) highlights the Cushitic shift from the general Christian Nubian cluster:

Factoring in his uniparentals, it looked like nothing that deviates from the extant Somali with L2a1j and E-V32, barring potential different sub-mutational structuring.

I'm not sure if the Kenyan Iron Age was an intelligent application. All I can say is that it might have elevated Nilotic ancestry, relative to Kulubnartis that had predominantly Saharan-type sub-structure:

The sources utilized were simulated leaks for Ancient Egyptian samples, OK, OMK, and MK (questionable how they coordinated those, but that's another discussion, lol). 'Saharan' stands for Toubou, which maximizes such ancestry (incl. Zaghawa types). Cushitic is Elmenteitan, with a personal southern Somalia sample that is arguably one of the "purest."

With regards to modern Sudanese Nubians, they got slightly elevated Dinka-like ancestry above Saharan.

Interestingly, he might have had connections to Nabateans. It puts an insight into the northeast African globalized interconnectivity within the Arab economic sphere:

This better end up in G25. I'll be heated if they drop this because of some bogus claim about low coverage when it has been years of waiting.

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[Xareen]

OMG FINALLY DUDE. Thanks alchemist, we love u

 

[Xareen]

And alch, the triangulation process that coordinated the samples is pretty robust. The sims resemble closely the actual coordinates.

 

[The alchemist]

And alch, the triangulation process that coordinated the samples is pretty robust. The sims resemble closely the actual coordinates.

I acknowledge the clever contrived approach in matching the rough PCA number positions, and the cords used together make up good relative sources because the first shady folks removed the minor SSA, making it a good stand-in having fewer biases (although it was not a valid move, IMO). After all, African ancestry always takes precedence when modeling these types of groups, so having those AE coordinates with zero to negligible SSA makes them better for modeling purposes.

I use them because it works. It's a practical thing, not a scientifically valid one. Regardless, those sims ascertain well enough. That's why I appreciate the guy who triangulated these for sure.

 

[Cognitive]

Bravo. If you would hazard a guess, what was his likely ancestral background?
Early X-Group / Late Meroitic + what (the Cushitic part, since a more likely scenario to me is that the individual started in the deserts of eastern Sudan.)?
I would think the man was “culturally Nubian” with forebears of full or at least deep rooted recent Cushitic ancestry. Question is what was the name of the Cushitic group that occupied large portions of Nubian deserts during the 300 AD? They were certainly some type of “Blemmyes”, but was there a specific archaeological terminology for that phase? In addition, were there connections (other than the biological profiles) between these Cushitic desert people and Kenyan Iron Age pastoralists?

 

[Greattragedy]

I acknowledge the clever contrived approach in matching the rough PCA number positions, and the cords used together make up good relative sources because the first shady folks removed the minor SSA, making it a good stand-in having fewer biases

How did you come to know they were tampered with when it comes to SSA ancestry?

 

[NidarNidar]

Cushites had a fish taboo, I always scratch my head since we originate off the red sea hills.

 

[Garaad Awal]

Have the G25 cords been released?

 

[Himmler]

How did you come to know they were tampered with when it comes to SSA ancestry?

The people that made the coordinates said it themselves

 

[Himmler]

Bravo. If you would hazard a guess, what was his likely ancestral background?
Early X-Group / Late Meroitic + what (the Cushitic part, since a more likely scenario to me is that the individual started in the deserts of eastern Sudan.)?

There is no way to say this without aDNA from those Nubian groups

 

[Emir of Zayla]

Interestingly, he might have had connections to Nabateans. It puts an insight into the northeast African globalized interconnectivity within the Arab economic sphere:
View attachment 306508

This man may have been a merchant/traveler on the Incense Trade Route if he has relations with the Nabataeans, this is fascinating

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incense_trade_route

 

[The alchemist]

Bravo. If you would hazard a guess, what was his likely ancestral background?
Early X-Group / Late Meroitic + what (the Cushitic part, since a more likely scenario to me is that the individual started in the deserts of eastern Sudan.)?
I would think the man was “culturally Nubian” with forebears of full or at least deep rooted recent Cushitic ancestry. Question is what was the name of the Cushitic group that occupied large portions of Nubian deserts during the 300 AD? They were certainly some type of “Blemmyes”, but was there a specific archaeological terminology for that phase? In addition, were there connections (other than the biological profiles) between these Cushitic desert people and Kenyan Iron Age pastoralists?

The sample in question is likely a Cushite; I'm 90% certain of this when you factor in the E-V32/L2a1j and the predominant emphasis on Kenyan Iron Age Pastoralist samples regarding modeling. Had they had Somali in that weighted admixture scheme, I am very confident it would have scored overwhelmingly Somali.

A new finding my character fitted whatever DNA that was mustered and the closest distance by far was Somali.

Revising our assumption, the word "Nubian" to me is strictly on geographic region whereas the region contained interrelated groups that exchanged economic synergy. The sample existed before the time the Nobatians were present in the historical record, and fit in a terminal later Meroitic era to potentially

I don't know what genetics the X-Group of Late Meoritic had, honestly.

I think this sample is very Somali-like because of two reasons. First, the primacy of the Kenyan Pastoral Iron Age sample in the model. Secondly, Eurogenes K36 fitted the data within their context and found the sample was closest to Somalis.

Now, granted the quality of the data is rather low, but factoring in the E-V32 and L2a1j, two important uniparentals for Somalis, I would not be surprised if that sample is ancestral Somali, or perhaps coming from an ancestral Somali source somewhere in the Eastern Desert/parts of Nile Valley (1st-2nd cataract), representing a major pool of genetics that migrated to the Somali peninsula between 3500 BP and 2700 BP.



The sample in question is likely a Cushite; I'm 90% certain of this when you factor in the E-V32/L2a1j and the predominant emphasis on Kenyan Iron Age Pastoralist samples regarding modeling. Had they had Somali in that weighted admixture scheme, I am confident it would have scored overwhelmingly Somali-like.

A new finding by a user on an anthro-forum fitted whatever DNA mustered into a K36 Eurogenes scheme, and the closest distance by far was Somali. There is uncertainty to take account of. Low snp count can provide wrong-tailed results, blurring proximal signatures, for example, on the ~20% margins. We can flip this and claim the PCA is wrong while the computation on the distance showing Somali-like values is correct. It can go both ways.

One can speculate that this sample was either from a descendant source population the ancestral Somali E-V32 (not particularly downstream Y-DNA sense, but population extraction) came from in Northeast Africa, or we might be looking at an ancestral Somali sample. That is a possibility, after all.

Generally, people of the Eastern Desert were called Blemmyes or Barbaroi by the Graceo-Romans. Berber is a general term for the Cushitic groups of Northeast Africa. I go by Blemmyes now as a general term for the Cushitic confederacy of the Eastern Desert that existed under one king they called "Isemne" for 900 years between Wadi Hammamat to, at minimum, the 4th cataract, probably all the way to the north of Gash, and into Eritrea during later periods because of how it was the Beja that ruled that land and not Habash peoples in the post-Axumite period as well.

The native pottery of these people was Eastern Desert Ware (EDW), something found among the X-Group culture as the latter lacked any defining artistic expression in their material culture, for the most part, importing their material.

There were no Kenyan Iron Age-proper folks in the Eastern Desert.

 

[The alchemist]

How did you come to know they were tampered with when it comes to SSA ancestry?

The people who got the leaks first made the claim. Saying it was "noise." In truth, they did it to prove a childish point to the "Hoteps," unprofessional spiteful nonsense tampering with data.

 

[The alchemist]

Cushites had a fish taboo, I always scratch my head since we originate off the red sea hills.

Cushites are from general areas, not only specifically the Eastern Desert. We most likely have much to do with the A-C type site Cultures plus the desertic folks, all interrelated. But that is a much deeper topic.

Fish taboo was a thing but not absolute. Archaeology has uncovered fish remains in Somaliland and Djibouti by ancestral peoples. We have to be careful not to get trapped by dogmatic thinking because there are many exceptions, and humans are not too rigid in their ways.

 

[The alchemist]

Have the G25 cords been released?

Nah, but some guy released this:

"When using Eurogenes K36 this sample (I15499) is most similar to Somalians according to my averages:

I15499

[1] "1. CLOSEST SINGLE ITEM DISTANCE%"
Africa_SO_Somalia
0.7285033
Africa_DJI_Djibouti:Afar
1.1554493
Africa_ET_Afar-Region
1.3693630
Africa_ET_Agew-Awi-Zone:Agaw
1.5261458
Africa_ET_Ethiopia-Amhara
1.5389246
Africa_ET_Ethiopia-Oromia
1.7126640
Africa_ER_Eritrea-Gash-Barka:Tigre
1.7400256
"

 

[MarcusAbdul]

Fascinating Sxb, on your point on the migration from the Eastern Desert/parts of the Nile Valley. "3500 BP and 2700 BP" is awfully recent, but i guess that does make sense. In regards to archaeology, specifically a lot of cave paintings and what not we see in the Horn seem to date back to 3000 BCE.

 

[MarcusAbdul]

Cushites are from general areas, not only specifically the Eastern Desert. We most likely have much to do with the A-C type site Cultures plus the desertic folks, all interrelated. But that is a much deeper topic.

Fish taboo was a thing but not absolute. Archaeology has uncovered fish remains in Somaliland and Djibouti by ancestral peoples. We have to be careful not to get trapped by dogmatic thinking because there are many exceptions, and humans are not too rigid in their ways.

I'm curious, what general areas do you think Cushites roamed around? Correct me if i'm not wrong, they seem to be based in and around southern egypt/northern sudan? Interestingly enough Nilotic groups seem to create a mirror image, being based in upper nubia, the Nile Valley was truly a diverse group of people indeed! Again thank you

 

[The alchemist]

Fascinating Sxb, on your point on the migration from the Eastern Desert/parts of the Nile Valley. "3500 BP and 2700 BP" is awfully recent, but i guess that does make sense. In regards to archaeology, specifically a lot of cave paintings and what not we see in the Horn seem to date back to 3000 BCE.

Those numbers are about E-V32, not the complete autosomal sourcing. I think the age of the broader autosomal lineage expanded to our region not many centuries before E-V32 came (assuming it was around 3000 years ago).

Those cattle herd paintings are fundamentally the horizons that show our origin back to southern Egypt and Northern Sudan:

This is a C-Group art:

East Cushitic art Sidamo region (East Cushite land):

Engraved on the rock wall:

C-Group pottery:

Another C-Group. Pay attention to the artificially bent horn:

We all know about the Laas Geel striking majestic depiction but this is another site (and we have received almost no attention). Note the color schemes. Dhambalin Rock Art Site, Somaliland:

C-group. Same red and white contrast:

C-Group culture, again, with bent horn:

Somaliland, a cattle with similarly shaped horns:

These people arrived in the Somali peninsula and lowland northeast Africa around 4500-3000 years before the present, roughly coinciding with the group I was referring to. So people related to the C-Group went down to the northern Somali region which coincides with the archeology of when pastoralists came to the region.

Based on its stylistic affinities with Nubian C-Group pottery, Clark (1972), & ervicek Pastoral rock art in the Horn of Africa: making sense of udder chaos 207 (1979) and Graziosi (1964b) have tentatively dated the rock art of the Ethiopian-Arabian style to 5,000-3,000 years b.p.

These were the autosomal people who would exist within the same broader-ethnic identity as the C-Group type Nubian cultures before they migrated south contemporaneously. The people who would be in Lower Nubia and Eastern Desert would all be inter-related as well, of course. But the material culture, so far, is more present in the C-Group, plus the burial types among the desert dwellers. But we have to take note that circular cemeteries existed among all the Northern Nile dwellers, not particularly only Eastern Desert people, in ancient times. All these groups were probably highly mixed with each other and genetically Cushitic.

 

[Xareen]

There were no Kenyan Iron Age-proper folks in the Eastern Desert.

Nara? Kunama? They were at least on the peripheries.

 

[Xareen]

Alchemist, yet again, vindicated.


...kinda. Done some prelim runs using the simulated coordinates and this fellow is very, very Omotic. Kinda Pygmy? Kinda San too. Idk what to make of it. Low coverage and simulated, I know, but yh.