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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 


This show the peopling of the Sahara during the Holocene period (Green Sahara).

It is from this study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/458.full.pdf

(Reading the part of the study starting with the title: The Peopling of the Sahara During the Holocene is very interesting. I assume people have read it)

The Barbed Points (aqualithic) and Ounanian culture are both ancient indigenous African culture. According to the study, the Aqualithic African culture spread following the expansion of aquatic resources in the Holocene which made the Sahara attractive to populations with existing fishing and riverine hunting skills. The Ounanian culture (Niger-congo speakers) from North West Africa would have spread southward and Eastward following big land animals with their bow and arrow hunting skills.

We already know Ancient Egypt may have been the combination of many ethnic groups distributed along many sepats. The numbering of the sepats starting at one with Nubia in the south. I wonder if the population of Ancient Kemet and Nubia/Kush are not the product further down the line of both those cultures. Ancient Egyptians being closer to Ounanian (Niger-congo speakers) while Kushite closer to Aqualithic (Nilo-saharan) with a lot of mixage involved. Also the Kushite (nilo-saharan) would have been slightly darker in hue than Ancient Egyptians (Niger-congo) in general. Although it must be noted that Ancient Egyptian culture spread from Upper Egypt (south) to Lower Egypt (north). Maybe it's the interaction (admixage) between the descendants of ancestral Ounanians cultures and Aqualithic cultures which laid the foundation of Ancient Kemet which later spreads further north toward Lower Egypt to form the whole Ancient Egyptian territory.
 

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Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
 
Excellent map Amun Ra the ultimate.The Maa fishing confederation was the first civilization of green Sahara.When the Sahara became a desert people from the Maa confederation left to create Ancient Egypt, Minoan, Sumeria, Anatoli, Elam, Harrapa etc.
 

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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
The Kushites were not Nilo-Saharan speakers. They were probably part of the Ounanians culture not Aqualithic culture. The Aqualithic culture is much , much older than Kushite or Egyptian cultures (Winters,2012). I believe that the original founders of the African Aqualithic were pgymy people. Nilo-Saharans may have learned this cultural tradition from the Anu or pgymy people.

quote:

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Anu first rulers of Egypt




Nar mar conquroring the Anu ?




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quote:

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The “Ounanian” of Northern Mali, Southern Algeria,
Niger, and central Egypt at ca. 10 ka is partly defined by a
distinctive type of arrow point (37). These arrowheads are found
in much of the northern Sahara (Fig. 3) and are generally considered
to have spread from Northwest Africa. This view is supported
by the affinity of this industry with the Epipalaeolithic that also
appears to have colonized the Sahara from the north (41). No
Ounanian points occur in West Africa before 10 ka, suggesting
the movement of a technology across the desert from north to
south around this time.

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The original inhabitants of the Sahara where the Kemetic civilization originated were Blacks not Berbers or Indo-European speakers (Winters,1994,2002,2012). These Blacks formerly lived in the highland regions of the Fezzan and Hoggar until after 4000 BC(Winters,1994,2002).

Overtime the Saharan Highlands/Mountains of the Moon area became arid. As the Highlands became arid the Proto-Saharans migrated down from the Mountains of the Moon to settle around the MegaChad and MegaFezzan lakes. Around MegaFezzan the Proto-Saharans founded the Maa civilization. Around this time West Africa and the Nile Valley was probably controlled by the Pgymies,

This ancient homeland of the Dravidians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Niger-Kordofanian-Mande and Elamite speakers is called the Fertile African Crescent(Anselin, 1989, p.16; Winters, 1981,1985b,1991, 2002). We call these people the Proto-Saharans (Winters 1985b,1991). The generic term for this group is Kushite.
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The proto-Saharans specialized in the use of the bow. They were experts in navigation and boat technology.This resulted from the presence of numerous rivers and lakes that dotted africa at this time.



These Proto-Saharans were called Ta-Seti and Tehenu by the Egyptians (Winters,1994,2002). Farid(1985,p.82) noted that "We can notice that the beginning of the Neolithic stage in Egypt on the edge of the Western Desert corresponds with the expansion of the Saharian Neolithic culture and the growth of its population".

The inhabitants of the Fezzan were round headed Africans. (Jelinek, 1985,p.273; Winters,2002) The cultural characteristics of the Fezzanese were analogous to C-Group culture items and the people of Ta-Seti . The C-Group people occupied the Sudan and Fezzan regions between 3700-1300 BC (Jelinek 1985;Winters,1994).

The inhabitants of Libya were called Tmhw (Temehus). The Temehus were organized into two groups the Thnw (Tehenu) in the North and the Nhsj (Nehesy) in the South. (Diop 1986; Winters,1994) A Tehenu personage is depicted on Amratian period pottery (Farid 1985 ,p. 84). The Tehenu wore pointed beard, phallic-sheath and feathers on their head.

The Temehus are called the C-Group people by archaeologists.(Jelinek, 1985; Quellec, 1985). The central Fezzan was a center of C-Group settlement. Quellec (1985, p.373) discussed in detail the presence of C-Group culture traits in the Central Fezzan along with their cattle during the middle of the Third millennium BC.

The Temehus or C-Group people began to settle Kush around 2200 BC. The kings of Kush had their capital at Kerma, in Dongola and a sedentary center on Sai Island. The same pottery found at Kerma is also present in Libya especially the Fezzan.

The C-Group founded the Kerma dynasty of Kush. Diop (1986, p.72) noted that the "earliest substratum of the Libyan population was a black population from the south Sahara". Kerma was first inhabited in the 4th millennium BC (Bonnet 1986). By the 2nd millennium BC Kushites at kerma were already worshippers of Amon/Amun and they used a distinctive black-and-red ware (Bonnet 1986; Winters 1985b,1991). Amon, later became a major god of the Egyptians during the 18th Dynasty.

There are similarities between Egyptian and Saharan motifs (Farid,1985). It was in the Sahara that we find the first evidence of agriculture, animal domestication and weaving (Farid , 1985, p.82). This highland region is the Kemites "Mountain of the Moons " region, the area from which the civilization and goods of Kem, originated (Winters,2012).

The rock art of the Saharan Highlands support the Egyptian traditions that in ancient times they lived in the Mountains of the Moon. The Predynastic Egyptian mobiliar art and the Saharan rock art share many common themes including, characteristic boats(Farid 1985,p. 82), men with feathers on their head (Petrie ,1921,pl. xvlll,fig.74; Raphael, 1947, pl.xxiv, fig.10; Vandier, 1952, p.285, fig. 192), false tail hanging from the waist (Vandier, 1952, p.353; Farid, 1985,p.83; Winkler 1938,I, pl.xxlll) and the phallic sheath (Vandier, 1952, p.353; Winkler , 1938,I , pl.xvlll,xx, xxlll).

Due to the appearance of aridity in the Mountains of the Moon the Proto-Saharans migrated first around the megalakeFezzan. Here they founded the Maa civilization until this area was also overcome by arid winds.

Other Proto-Saharans, left the megalakeFezzan area migrated from there southward into Nubia and thence they moved along the Nile up into Upper Egypt or Kem/Egypt which was originally occupied by the Anu or pgymy people. The Proto-Saharan origin of the Kemites explain the fact that the Kushites were known for maintaining the most ancient traditions of the Kemites as proven when the XXVth Dynasty or Kushite Dynasty ruled ancient Egypt. Farid (1985, p.85) wrote that "To conclude, it seems that among Predynastic foreign relations, the [Proto-]Saharians were the first to have significant contact with the Nile Valley, and even formed a part of the Predynastic population" (emphasis author).

The ancestors of the Kemites originally lived in Nubia. The Nubian origin of Egyptian civilization is supported by the discovery of artifacts by archaeologists from the Oriental Institute at Qustul. On a stone incense burner found at Qustul we find a palace facade, a crowned King sitting on a throne in a boat, with a royal standard placed before the King and hovering above him, the falcon god Horus. The white crown on this Qustul king was later worn by the rulers of Upper Egypt.



Many Egyptologists were shocked to learn in 1979, that the A-Group of Nubia at Qustul used Egyptian type writing two hundred years before the Egyptians (Williams 1987). This fact had already been recognized much earlier by Anta Diop (1974) when he wrote that it was in Nubia "where we find the animals and plants represented in hieroglyphic writing".

In reality the early Egyptians used the Thinite script. This was a syllabic form of writing later used by the people of the Sahara, Elamites, Indus Valley and the Olmecs in America.



The Qustul incense burner indicates that the unification of Nubia preceded that of Egypt. The Ta-Seti had a rich culture at Qustul. Qustul Cemetery L had tombs that equaled or exceeded Kemite tombs of the First Dynasty of Egypt. The A-Group people were called Steu 'bowmen'.

The Steu had the same funeral customs, pottery, musical instruments and related artifacts of the Egyptians. Williams (1987, p.173,182) believes that the Qustul Pharaohs are the Egyptian Rulers referred to as the Red Crown rulers in ancient Egyptian documents.

Dr. Williams (1987) gave six reasons why he believes that the Steu of Qustul founded Kemite civilization:

1. Direct progression of royal complex designs from Qustul to Hierakonpolis to Abydos.

2. Egyptian objects in Naqada III a-b tombs

3. No royal tombs in Lower and Upper Egypt.

4. Pharoanic monuments that refer to conflict in Upper Egypt.

5. Inscriptions of the ruler Pe-Hor, are older than Iry-Hor of Abydos.

6. The ten rulers of Qustul, one at Hierakonpolis and three at Abydos corresponds to the "historical"kings of late Naqada period.

The findings of Williams (1987), support the findings of Diop (1991) because we also understand better now why the Egyptian term designating royalty etymologically means: (the man) who comes from the South= nsw< n y swt = who belongs to the South= who is a native of the South= the King of Lower Egypt, and has never meant just King, in other words king of Lower and Upper Egypt, King of all Egypt (p.108).

During Kemite Dynasty I,the A-Group or Ta-Seti (Kushite) people of Lower Nubia disappear. Given the close relationship between the Predynastic Egyptians and Ta-Seti who founded the first empire on earth (Williams 1985), suggest that the Narmar Palette, depiction of the epic battle which unified Kem may also record the forced submission of the A-Group people to Upper Egyptian rule. The terms of this victory may have called for the A-Group people to move into Kem. This would explain the lack of archaeological data on the A-Group people after the unification of Kem. This would also explain how the Egyptian form of government came from the south into the Delta. Trigger (1987) noted that: Evidence that both the Red and the White Crowns were originally southern Egyptian symbols suggests that most of the iconography originated in Upper Egypt" (p.63).

The research makes it clear that the first sepats or nomes of Egypt were probably founded by “Kushites” who spoke a Niger-Congo language and belonged to the Ounanian culture. The A-Group people were the foundation of the Egyptians. The Egyptians differenciated themselves from the Kushites once the former city-states or sepats became Kem (Winters,1994,2002).

References:


Anselin,A.(1984). "Zeus, Ethiopien Minos Tamoul", Carbet Revue Martinique de Sciences Humaines,no. 2:31-50. This articles explains the African origin of the Libyans. It has several very good illustrations of Blacks in ancient Sahara.

_______.(1989). "Le Lecon Dravidienne",Carbet Revue Martinique de Sciences Humaines, no.9:7-58. This paper discussed the origins of the Dravidian.

Bonnet,C. (1986). Kerma: Territoire et Metropole. Cairo: Instut Francais D'Archeologie Orientale du Caire. This is a fine examination of the Kerma culture of Nubia which existed in Nubia before the Egyptians established rule in this area.

Diop,C.A. (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. (ed. & Trans) by Mercer Cook, Westport:Lawrence Hill & Company. This book outlines Diop's theory of the African origin of Egyptian civilization.

_________.(1977). Parente genetique de l'Egyptien Pharaonique et des Languaes Negro-Africaines. Dakar: IFAN ,Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines. This is a very good discussion of the extensive morphological and phonological evidence of unity between Wolof and Egyptian.

__________.(1978) The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. Chicago:Third World Press. This book details the precolombian character of African civilizations, and explains the common cultural expressions they share.

___________.(1986). "Formation of the Berber Branch". In Libya Antiqua. (ed.) by Unesco,(Paris: UNESCO) pp.69-73. In this article Diop explains that the original inhabitants of Libya were Blacks.

____________.(1987). Precolonial Black Africa. (trans. ) by
Harold Salemson, Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company. In this book Diop explains the origin and connections between the major Western Sudanic empires and states. These states are compared to European states.

____________.(1988). Nouvelles recherches sur l'Egyptien ancientet les langues Negro-Africaines Modernes. Paris: Presence Africaine. This book provides a number of Diop's theories regarding the relationship between Black-African and Egyptian languages.

_____________(1991). Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. (trans.) by Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi and (ed.) by H.J. Salemson and Marjoliiw de Jager, Westport:Lawrence Hill and Company. This book details Diop's theory of the genetic model for the study of African civilization. It also gives a fine discussion of the architecture, mathematics and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians and other African people.

Farid,El-Yahky. (1985). "The Sahara and Predynastic Egypt an Overview".The Journal for the Society for the Study Egyptian Antiquities, 17 (1/2): 58-65. This paper gives a detailed discussion of the affinities between Egyptian civilization and the Saharan civilizations which we call Proto-Saharan.The evidence presented in this paper support the Saharan origin of the Egyptians.

Galassi, . (1942). Tehenu. Rome. Galassi explains the history of the Tehenu people forerunners of the Libyans.

Jelinek,J. (1985). "Tillizahren,the Key Site of the Fezzanese Rock Art". Anthropologie (Brno),23(3):223-275. This paper gives a stimulating account of the rock art of the Sahara and the important role the C-Group people played in the creation of this art.

Quellec,J-L le. (1985). "Les Gravures Rupestres Du Fezzan (Libye)". L'Anthropologie, 89 (3):365-383. This text deals comprehensively with the dates and spread of specific art themes in the ancient Sahara.

Winters, Clyde. (1985b). "The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians,Manding and Sumerians". Tamil Civilization, 3(1):1-9. http://olmec98.net/Fertile1.pdf . Winters uses linguistics , historical and archaeological evidence to argue that the Dravidian, Manding and Sumerian speakers originated in the highland regions of the Sahara which he called the "Fertile African Crescent". Many of the culture terms of these groups are discussed and the proto-terms are reconstructed. It also provides numerous maps to delienate the migrations of these people from their archetype homeland.

__________. (1989a). "Tamil, Sumerian, Manding and the Genetic Model". International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics,18(1):98-127. Winters discusses the genesis of the common culture of the founders of ancient civilizations in Africa and Asia. It also refutes the myth that the Sumerian and Dravidian languages are unrelated to any other languages on earth. Here you will find a detailed explanation of the morphological, semantic and lexical affinities shared by these langauges that indicate their genetic unity.

___________. (1991). "The Proto-Sahara". The Dravidian Encyclopaedia, (Trivandrum: International School of Dravidian Linguistics) pp.553-556. Volume l. This is a detailed account of the Proto-Saharan origin of the Elamites,Dravidians, Sumerians, Egyptians and other Black African groups. We also find here a well developed illumination of the cultural features shared by these genetically related groups.

_____________. (1994). Afrocentricity: A Valid Frame of Reference. Journal of Black Studies, 5(2);170-190. In this paper Dr. Winters explains the reality of Afrocentrism as a social science. He explains that ancient Egypt was probably founded by the A-Group, and the Kushites were predominately C-Group people. He discussses the role of C-Group people in the founding the River Valley Civilizations of Africa and Eurasia.

_______________.(2002). Ancient Afrocentric History and the Genetic Model. In Egypt vs. Greece and the American Aacademy , Ed. By Molefi K. Asante and A. Mazama, pp.121-164. In this article Dr. Winters explains that the founders of civilization in Eurasia, the Americas and Africa were Kushites.

_______________.(2012).Egyptian Language: The Mountains of the Moon, Niger-Congo Speakers and the Origin of Egypt. Kindle Books.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Here's some other interesting maps of rock art and thus people distribution in the Sahara and Northern Africa. It's the first time I see such rock art distribution map for Africa. Usually, it is often limited by one specific site (like the Tassili rock art map).

They can all be seen in the full study link here :



Here we compare the distribution of the Red-rimmed melania snail in the Green Sahara and in current Africa. The fossils sites in northern Africa matches the recent distribution of the species in the south.



Great rock art distribution map. Here rock art drawings of the Giraffe in the Sahara and Northern Africa matches recent distribution in the south.



Another great rock art distribution map. Here rock art drawing of the African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) in the Sahara and Northern Africa matches Giraffe distribution recently in the south.

Nice!
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
Great post A Ra. Ul. Just started reading the 42 pgs. The layout of the rock art tells a story.

Rock art is one thing. Did find actual bones of these animals in the Sahara? Ie thousands of miles away?
oops! My bad. I just re-read and saw "and fossils"
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
Evidently, the African elephant traversed the Sahara during greener times. I always maintained Iberia and Sicily, not only the near east, was another entry point into Europe. That is why 50% of the aDNA in Iberia is recent African. That is why the Basque, a younger population first, occupied Iberia cf the older modern Europeans. And the Basque is part Berber.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
What is important to remember with this study (and other similar studies) is that the Sahara wasn't a barrier to the migration to the Mediterranean coast of Sub-Saharan Africans during the Holocene. The Holocene is the period preceding the current dry phase of the Sahara.

While the Holocene period is what interest me here. Since it's the period preceding the current dry period and goes in line with the theory that Ancient Egyptians were part of a larger Saharan civilization complex (during wet phases and as a product of the migration from the Sahara during the current dry phase). The text also mentions other wet periods before the Holocene that correlate with migration of sub-saharan Africans (sub-saharan is less of a misnomer here as they were really Africans from below the Sahara which was not a desert at that time).

quote:

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Older Saharan Occupation and Crossings

Using the Holocene biogeography and palaeohydrology of the
Sahara as an analogue for the MIS5 humid period, it is likely that
an interconnected waterway would have been available for faunal
and human dispersal. This humid period corresponds very closely
with the age of the first modern human occupation of the North
African coast (45) and the Levant (46) by sub-Saharan populations ,
who may have been crossing the Sahara at this time (9).
The occupation of the Mediterranean coast of Africa by these early modern human migrants appears to have lasted from
∼110 to ∼30 ka (45), though the Levantine occupation appears
to have finished by ∼70 ka (47). Some view the out-of-Africa dispersal
into the Levant as the start of the spread of modern humans
onward into Arabia and India in MIS5 (48), whereas others
believe it to be a “dead end” that was followed by a later more
successful dispersal of modern humans out of Africa at a later
date: 60 ka in MIS4 (49).

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-Excerpt from the study

Basically it says that in much ancient times, Africans from the south of the Sahara had occupied the Mediterranean coast crossing the Green Sahara in wet phases preceding the Holocene.

Bottom line is that the Sahara (which wasn't a desert at ancient times) was not a barrier to the migration of Africans from below the Sahara during the Holocene and previous wet phases.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 


Let's get back to the current holocene and dry phase of the Sahara.

The cognates for hippo (and crocodile) in nilo-sahelian languages is very interesting.




That means Gumuz speakers in Ethiopia and Songhay speakers in Niger were probably once part of a populations which had hippopotamus. And since the word for hippo is the same for Gumuz speakers in Ethiopia and Songhay speakers in Niger, in our current context, it means those populations were previously linked together by a civilization that had hippopotamus and used the same word for it. People in Ethiopia and Niger, in this case, were part of the same cultural complex.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
The Black Mummy (Uan Muhuggiag mummy)



VIDEO: http://youtu.be/4mON0HWla5o

This gets even more interesting when you explore if there's any linkage between those black African populations in the Sahara and Ancient Egyptians.

The video brings up interesting aspects related to this.

Similarity between the Ancient Saharan culture and Ancient Egypt (according to video ):

1 - Deliberate mummification: The mummification of the black mummy in the Sahara predates the earliest example in the Nile Valley.

2 - Similar cattle ritual sacrifice

3 - Presence in cave art of animal headed figures (predating the Nile valley).

4 - Relatively small geographic distance between the Saharan civilization and Ancient Egypt.

5 - Excavation shows an abrupt influx of highly decorated Saharan pottery 6000 years ago in the Nile valley. This pottery had a definitive Saharan style and was not previously found in the Nile Valley.
 

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Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
 
Immigrant from the Maa confederation of the Sahara after its desertification created Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Elam, Minoan etc.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Another video from the History Channel about the black mummy and the Ancient Saharan civilization:
http://www.history.com/videos/mummies-case-of-the-black-mummy

Narration:

This unknown ancient superculture who mummified their dead and worship animal headed gods covered most of North Africa and when they were forced by climate change to migrate to the Nile Valley around 6,000 years ago, we believe they bequeathed many of their rituals and beliefs to the Ancient Egyptians including mummification itself.
 

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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
Another video from the History Channel about the black mummy and the Ancient Saharan civilization:
http://www.history.com/videos/mummies-case-of-the-black-mummy

Narration:

This unknown ancient superculture who mummified their dead and worship animal headed gods covered most of North Africa and when they were forced by climate change to migrate to the Nile Valley around 6,000 years ago, we believe they bequeathed many of their rituals and beliefs to the Ancient Egyptians including mummification itself.

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These people belonged to the Maa Civilization.

You can see my video on Maa Civilization at this site on Youtube

Enjoy

.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 

It seems this Saharan-Sahel-Nile civilization has left 100 of such rock paintings in the Atlas Mountains in the Morocco country (discovered by Susan Searight). This is an example of one.
 

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Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
 
Great Maa civilization video Clyde.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Ancient humans 'followed rains'
By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News

Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed.

The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland.

When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa.

The close link between human settlement and climate has lessons for today, researchers report in Science.

"Even modern day conflicts such as Dafur are caused by environmental degradation as it has been in the past," Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne, Germany, told the BBC News website.

"The basic struggle for food, water and pasture is still a big problem in the Sahara zone. This process started thousands of years ago and has a long tradition."

Jigsaw puzzle

The Eastern Sahara, which covers more than 2 million sq km, an area the size of Western Europe, is now almost uninhabited by people or animals, providing a unique window into the past.

Dr Kropelin and colleague Dr Rudolph Kuper pieced together the 10,000-year jigsaw of human migration and settlement; studying more than 100 archaeological sites over the course of 30 years.

In the largest study of its kind, they built up a detailed picture of human evolution in the world's largest desert. They found that far from the inhospitable climate of today, the area was once semi-humid.

Between about 14,000 and 13,000 years ago, the area was very dry. But a drastic switch in environmental conditions some 10,500 years ago brought rain and monsoon-like conditions.

Nomadic human settlers moved in from the south, taking up residence beside rivers and lakes. They were hunter-gatherers at first, living off plants and wild game.

Eventually they became more settled, domesticating cattle for the first time, and making intricate pottery.

Neolithic farmers

Humid conditions prevailed until about 6,000 years ago, when the Sahara abruptly dried out. There was then a gradual exodus of people to the Nile Valley and other parts of the African continent.


“ The domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa ”
Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne

"The Nile Valley was almost devoid of settlement until about exactly the time that the Egyptian Sahara was so dry people could not live there anymore," Dr Kropelin told the BBC News website.

"People preferred to live on savannah land. Only when this wasn't possible they migrated towards southern Sudan and the Nile.

"They brought all their know-how to the rest of the continent - the domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa.

"This Neolithic way of life, which still is a way of life in a sense; preservation of food for the dry season and many other such cultural elements, was introduced to central and southern Africa from the Sahara."

'Motor of evolution'

Dr Kuper said the distribution of people and languages, which is so politically important today, has its roots in the desiccation of the Sahara.

The switch in environmental conditions acted as a "motor of Africa's evolution," he said.

"It happened during these 5,000 years of the savannah that people changed from hunter-gathers to cattle keepers," he said.

"This important step in human history has been made for the first time in the African Sahara."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5192410.stm
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
Great work AR Ultimate. Doing research on Etruscan skulls. Was suprise to learn the extent of the cover-up of the skull type BY Europeans. They were undoubtly Berber Africans!!! Will post on ESR. Hits are growing there.

quote:

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Originally posted by mena7:
Immigrant from the Maa confederation of the Sahara after its desertification created Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Elam, Minoan etc.

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
Great work AR Ultimate. Doing research on Etruscan skulls. Was suprise to learn the extent of the cover-up of the skull type BY Europeans. They were undoubtly Berber Africans!!! Will post on ESR. Hits are growing there.

quote:

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Originally posted by mena7:
Immigrant from the Maa confederation of the Sahara after its desertification created Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Elam, Minoan etc.

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:

Evidently, the African elephant traversed the Sahara during greener times. I always maintained Iberia and Sicily, not only the near east, was another entry point into Europe. That is why 50% of the aDNA in Iberia is recent African. That is why the Basque, a younger population first, occupied Iberia cf the older modern Europeans. And the Basque is part Berber.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:


It seems this Saharan-Sahel-Nile civilization has left 100 of such rock paintings in the Atlas Mountains in the Morocco country (discovered by Susan Searight). This is an example of one.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
[QUOTE]I don't see what "Etruscan skulls" have anything to do with any of it. ....I don't see much significance to it. ........ Except to show that in the past the Saharan-Sahel-Nile African civilization was far reaching.

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
Keep up the good work!

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
[QUOTE]I don't see what "Etruscan skulls" have anything to do with any of it. ....I don't see much significance to it. ........ Except to show that in the past the Saharan-Sahel-Nile African civilization was far reaching.

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Here's a map showing the distribution of wavy line pottery along the Sahara-Sahel-Nile Belt:


 

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Posted by beyoku (Member # 14524) on :
 
^ that map is not accurate. This type of pottery exists all throughout Egypt as well.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by beyoku:
^ that map is not accurate. This type of pottery exists all throughout Egypt as well.

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

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Originally posted by beyoku:
^ that map is not accurate. This type of pottery exists all throughout Egypt as well.

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Are you sure you're talking about *wavy-line* pottery? Please post sources and links. Nevertheless, wavy-line pottery has its origin in the black African population in the central Sahara and the Khartoum area (Sudan). That is within the Sahara-Sahel-Nile cultural belt/civilization. My following post will clarify those points.

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Originally posted by Swenet:
Are you really that dumb?

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The large distribution of Dotted Wavy Line ceramics, from the Atlantic Coast to the Red Sea , is now well established [EDIT:AKA the Sahelian-Sahel-Nile belt], as is the antiquity of the Wavy Line ceramics (Garcia 1993a, 1998;Jesse 1998) and of North African pottery in general (Close 1995). Ideas concerning how, when and where the Wavy Line pattern was distributed have undergone several changes since Arkell's(1949) first description based on new ceramic data and the addition of radiocarbon dates with both the Kharthoum region and the central Sahara being proposed as areas of its origin.

The development of the Dotted Wavy Line from incised Wavy Line, as already proposed by Arkell, was largely confirmed during the 1980s by the stratigraphic sequence at the site of Shaqadud in the Butana(-) and by the extensive work of Caneva and her team (-) in the Gelli-Kabbashi region north of Kharthoum.

For the Kharthoum area, Caneva(1996a) interprets the sequence of incised Wavy Line followed by Dotted Wavy Line as an autochtonous development in the Nile Valley, whereas the appearance of Dotted Wavy Line pottery is seen as the results of a Saharan cultural expansion. In the central Sahara, Dotted Wavy Line early dates range from 9300 to 9000 bp (Roset 1987,1996) while the introduction of Dotted Wavy Line from the Sahara into the Kharthoum province takes place around 6000bp(Caneva--).

Research work in the eastern part of the Sahara (-) has filled in many of the gaps in the distribution of Wavy Line pottery. The existence of early pottery-bearing sites in the Wadi Howar region, in assemblages with other decoration patterns (Dotted) Wavy Line, provided the basis for a general reconsideration of the Wavy Line distribution in northern Africa (Jesse 1998).

Analysis of the database, containing over 300 sites in northern Africa with Wavy Line pottery and associated radiocarbon dates, made it possible to discern two probable areas of "invention" of Wavy Line at around 9300bp, one in central Sahara and one in the eastern Sahara/Nile Valley.

The earliest occurrence of Wavy Line pottery is in the central Sahara at approximately 9000 bp. In the central Sahara, only Dotted Wavy Line is present and in the eastern Sahara/Nile Valley Incised Wavy Line is followed by Dotted Wavy Line.

- Extract from Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara: Volume 2: The Pottery of Nabta Playa (2002) By Kit Nelson

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

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Originally posted by Swenet:
Are you really that dumb?

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Why the insults and the condescending tone? I don't argue against anything. I just asked politely beyoku to post sources and links about his affirmation. I'm really just curious about it as it changes nothing about any theory exposed in this thread. Wave Line potteries have their origin in the Central Sahara and Khartoum area.

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Originally posted by Swenet:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

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Originally posted by Swenet:
Are you really that dumb?

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Why the insults and the condescending tone? I don't argue against anything. I just asked politely beyoku to post sources and links about his affirmation. I'm really just curious about it as it changes nothing about any theory exposed in this thread. Wave Line potteries have their origin in the Central Sahara and Khartoum area.

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Because you always know it better than everyone else, even though everything you're willing to defend as if your life depends on it, is something you just stumbled on the other day (or worse, never even stumbled on). From nasal index, to the implications of DNA Tribes analysis, to Henn et al 2012's supposed shortcomings, to hair type, and now wavy line pottery.

You were about to go at it with Beyoku, only this time I caught you in the act of starting another Google session to disprove what he said.

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There's things I know and things I don't know. I will defend the position about things I know and gain knowledge about things I don't know.

Anyway Kharthoum is on the map so your point is moot.
 

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Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
 
I never said Khartoum wasn't on that map.
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
Great discussion and thread...I am learning a lot. I always speculated the Sahara is where it was at. ....of even started. Although the current population distribution do not reflect that.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Here's an article about the oldest pottery in Africa. It is in Mali. Again part of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile Belt.

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Oldest African pottery found in Mali

Jan 18, 2007 - 10:56

A Swiss-led team of archaeologists has discovered pieces of the oldest African pottery in central Mali, dating back to at least 9,400BC.

The sensational find by Geneva University's Eric Huysecom and his international research team, at Ounjougou near the Unesco-listed Bandiagara cliffs, reveals important information about man's interaction with nature.

The age of the sediment in which they were found suggests that the six ceramic fragments - discovered between 2002 and 2005 - are at least 11,400 years old. Most ancient ceramics from the Middle East and the central and eastern Sahara regions are 10,000 and between 9-10,000 years old, respectively.

"At the beginning, the very first piece we found stayed in my desk drawer for years, as I didn't realise how old it was," Huysecom told swissinfo.

Huysecom heads a 50-strong interdisciplinary team, composed of 28 international researchers – mainly from Germany, Mali, Switzerland, France and Britain - on the largest current archaeological research project in Africa, entitled "Human population and paleo-environment in West Africa".

Ounjougou was selected as the location, "as everything led us to believe that there we could follow the evolution of man, the environment and the climate", explained Huysecom.

The site is an archaeologist's dream: a ravine made up of layers of easy-to-date sediment rich in West African history.
Significant findings

Since the launch of the project in 1997, the team has made numerous discoveries about ancient stone-cutting techniques and tools, and other important findings that shed light on human development in the region.

But the unearthing of the ancient fragments of burnt clay is one of the most significant to date. Huysecom is convinced that pottery was invented in West Africa to enable man to adapt to climate change.

"Apart from finding the oldest ceramic in Africa, the interesting thing is that it gives us information about when and under what circumstances man can invent new things, such as pottery," he explained.

"And the invention of ceramic is linked to specific environmental conditions – the transformation of the region from desert into grassland."
Grasslands

Some 10,000 years ago, at the end of the ice age, the climate is thought to have fluctuated between warm and cold periods. This led to the formation of an 800-kilometre-wide band of tropical vegetation extending northwards from the Sahel region, which attracted people who slowly moved north from southern and central Africa.

Wild grasses and pearl millet started sprouting on the former desert land. But for man to be able to eat and properly digest the new plants, they had to be stored and cooked in pots.

"Man had to adapt his food and way of life by inventing pottery," said the Geneva professor.

The invention of ceramic also coincided with that of small arrowheads - also discovered by the team – and which were probably used to hunt hares, pheasants and other small game on the grassy plains.

To date, East Asia – the triangle between Siberia, China and Japan – is the only other area where similar pottery and arrowheads have been found which are as old as those in West Africa, explained Huysecom.

"This is important, as they both appear in same way, at the same time and under similar climatic conditions, which indicates that man has certain modes of adaptation to cope with environmental changes," he commented.

Ahead of the final publication of the team's research findings this year, Huysecom is returning to Ounjougou to rejoin his colleagues, in particular those from West Africa "who are extremely proud of the discovery".

He plans to scour the region for caves and other settlement sites to try and find out exactly where the pottery came from so as to determine more precisely the age of the fragments.

"We know [from the sediment] that they are at least 11,400 years old, but they could be 50 or even 1,000 years older."

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/index/Swiss_archaeologist_digs_up_West_Africas_past.html?cid=5675736
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Here's a link to the discovery of the Dufuna boat in Nigeria (Dufuna), relatively close to Niger and Lake Chad. The oldest boat in Africa, third in the world. Again, this may be one of the technology of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization used during the early Holocene to populate the green Sahara, moving along rivers.



From: http://www.panafprehistory.org/images/papers/THE_8000-_YEAR-_OLD_DUGOUT_CANOE_FROM_DUFUNA_NEGERIA_Peter_Breunig_1.pdf (interesting read)

According to the document:

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The bow and stern are both carefully worked to points, giving the boat a notably more elegant form than finds of similar age from Mesolithic Europe, such as the aforementioned dugout made of conifer wood from Pesse in the Netherlands (Van Zeist 1957), whose blunt ends and thick sides seem crude in comparison with Dufuna. It is highly probable that the Dufuna boat does not represent the beginning of a tradition, but had already undergone a long development, and that the origins of water transport in Africa lie even further back in time.

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If these assumptions are correct, the makers of the dugout belonged to a population which spread along the southern edge of the Sahara , from north Kenya through the central Sudanese Nile Valley to the western Sahara , and adapted to the resources of the lakes of the early and mid- Holocene wet phase .

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Again linking the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Nabta playa is another important site when it comes to define the Sahara-Sahel-Nile black African civilization as well as showing potential relationship with the birth of Ancient Egypt.

We can see the location of Nabta Playa in the Wavy-Line pottery map above.

Nabta playa was inhabited by black Africans due to the favorable climate condition brought by the early Holocene (before that it was an arid desert). Following the end of the green sahara wet phase the population left the Nabta Playa site at a period which coincide with the birth of the Ancient Egyptians first dynasty. The level of sophistication of the Nabta Playa population part of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile cultural belt make them likely candidate as one of the formative population of Ancient Egypt.

Nabta Playa share many attributes with the rest of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization including cultural and ethnicity.

Among other things, the Nabta Playa population built Megaliths Stone Circle aligned with the stars.




Here's a text linking that Saharan-Sahel-Nile civilization of Nabta Playa with Ancient Egypt in term of cosmology:

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Attention to the rising position of Sirius by the population of Nabta anticipates the great importance of the helical rising of Sirius, known as Sothis, in the high cultures of the Nile Valley. The heliacal rising of Sirius [edit:Sopdet in Ancient Egyptian] occurred at summer solstice around 3000 BC. The Event marked the rising of the Nile and the start of the year. As such, the star appears to have served as the primary calibrator of the Egyptian Calendar for at least two millennia, starting with the First Dynasty. An ivory tablet containing an image of Sothis depicted as a seated cow bearing, between her horns, a young plant that may be symbolic of the relationship between Sirius and the newly born year, comes from the reign of Djer, in the First Dynasty, 3100-3055BC. Parker (1978) suggests that a calendar was in place as early as 3100 BC, calibrated by Sirius. The heliacal rising of Sirius was also used as the signal for the addition of an intercalary month, Thoth, approximately every third year. The difference between the solar year of 365.25 days and the Egyptian calendar year of 365 days generated the so-called Sothic cycle of 1460 years, when the heliacal rising of Sirius returns to the start of the solar calendar.

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- Excerpt from: Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara Volume 1: The Archaelogy of Nabta Playa by Wendorf

Here we may assist of cultural transfer from the Saharan-Sahel Nile civilization of Nabta Playa toward Ancient Egypt in the form of cosmological knowledge (among other things).

Similar megaliths can be seen elsewhere in Africa in Senegal-Gambia, Nigeria, Central Africa, etc.

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"The Central African Republic, on the other hand, possesses quite spectacular megaliths in the Bouar region. This has yielded some important dates, one group lying in the lowest strata of the monuments: 7440 +/- 170 b.b, that is 5490 before our era.. we cannot be certain where the Bouar megaliths should be placed in the Neolithic period but the culture which erected them can at least be said to be contemporary with the Neolithic."
--UNESCO General History of Africa: Methodology and African prehistory. 1981

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
Here's a map showing the distribution of wavy line pottery along the Sahara-Sahel-Nile Belt:

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
Nabta playa is another important site when it comes to define the Sahara-Sahel-Nile black African civilization as well as showing potential relationship with the birth of Ancient Egypt.

We can see the location of Nabta Playa in the Wavy-Line pottery map above.

Nabta playa was inhabited by black Africans due to the favorable climate condition brought by the early Holocene (before that it was an arid desert). Following the end of the green sahara wet phase the population left the Nabta Playa site at a period which coincide with the birth of the Ancient Egyptians first dynasty. The level of sophistication of the Nabta Playa population part of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile cultural belt make them likely candidate as one of the formative population of Ancient Egypt.

Nabta Playa share many attributes with the rest of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization including cultural and ethnicity.

Among other things, the Nabta Playa population built Megaliths Stone Circle aligned with the stars.




Here's a text linking that Saharan-Sahel-Nile civilization of Nabta Playa with Ancient Egypt in term of cosmology:

quote:

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Attention to the rising position of Sirius by the population of Nabta anticipates the great importance of the helical rising of Sirius, known as Sothis, in the high cultures of the Nile Valley. The heliacal rising of Sirius [edit:Sopdet in Ancient Egyptian] occurred at summer solstice around 3000 BC. The Event marked the rising of the Nile and the start of the year. As such, the star appears to have served as the primary calibrator of the Egyptian Calendar for at least two millennia, starting with the First Dynasty. An ivory tablet containing an image of Sothis depicted as a seated cow bearing, between her horns, a young plant that may be symbolic of the relationship between Sirius and the newly born year, comes from the reign of Djer, in the First Dynasty, 3100-3055BC. Parker (1978) suggests that a calendar was in place as early as 3100 BC, calibrated by Sirius. The heliacal rising of Sirius was also used as the signal for the addition of an intercalary month, Thoth, approximately every third year. The difference between the solar year of 365.25 days and the Egyptian calendar year of 365 days generated the so-called Sothic cycle of 1460 years, when the heliacal rising of Sirius returns to the start of the solar calendar.

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- Excerpt from: Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara Volume 1: The Archaelogy of Nabta Playa by Wendorf

Here we may assist of cultural transfer from the Saharan-Sahel Nile civilization of Nabta Playa toward Ancient Egypt in the form of cosmological knowledge (among other things).

Similar megaliths can be seen elsewhere in Africa in Senegal-Gambia, Nigeria, Central Africa, etc.

quote:

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"The Central African Republic, on the other hand, possesses quite spectacular megaliths in the Bouar region. This has yielded some important dates, one group lying in the lowest strata of the monuments: 7440 +/- 170 b.b, that is 5490 before our era.. we cannot be certain where the Bouar megaliths should be placed in the Neolithic period but the culture which erected them can at least be said to be contemporary with the Neolithic."
--UNESCO General History of Africa: Methodology and African prehistory. 1981

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Maybe the Africans who built the Monoliths in the Central African Republic were also once part of the Sahara-sahel-Nile cultural complex before leaving the green Sahara toward Central Africa (instead of the Nile Valley, West Africa, etc) during the dessication. Keeping with them the tradition of building monoliths (among other things).

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Of considerable interest is the likely racial identity of the Neolithic people at Nabta. Irish (1994) has recognized two major human populations in Africa, based on several diagnostic morphological variants of dental features among modern African populations. One group he relates to Europeans, and identifies as North African, includes the modern population in the Nile Valley from northern Sudan to the Mediterranean. The other, which he calls Sub-Saharan, occurs through most of Africa south of the Sahara. All of the individuals of Baqar Late Neolithic at Nabta are, like the Jerar Early Neolithic burial at Site E-91-1, within the Sub-Saharan group, and differ from those in the Nile Valley who are included in the North African group (Irish, Chapter 18, this volume). A larger sample is needed to be certain, but this limited evidence suggests that, at least since the later part of the Early Neolithic if not before, the cattle pastoralists in the southern part of the Egyptian Eastern Sahara had close physical ties with sub-Saharan Africa .

- Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara: Volume 1: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa (Chap 25: Conclusions, p 671)

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The African Sources of Egyptian Culture and Language

There exists today a controversy over the sources of Egyptian culture in which the contending proponents - the Classicists, as they might be called, on the one hand, and the Diop-influenced variety of Afrocentrists, on the other - argue opposing views that are equally misconceived. Both seem trapped in a time warp , the dimensions of which were laid down in the 19th century and set out in accord with the racialist orthodoxy of the times. Historical linguistics, archeological evidence and comparative ethnographic argumentation make it possible to resituate the arguments in late 20th-century terms. What emerges most strongly is the extent to which ancient Egypt's culture grew from sub-Saharan African roots. In the earliest formative years, it was people from the south who moved north into Egypt and brought in the primary features of a new economy and culture, along with an Afrasian language. In later times, from roughly the seventh to the fourth millennium, the now Afrasian-speaking population of Egypt drew from both the ancient Middle East (several major crops, the plough and two animals of secondary importance) and the Nilo-Saharan centre of agricultural invention located to the south in the Middle Nile Basin (two animals - one, the cow, of major cultural importance - and several secondary crops). So ancient Egypt was both in and of Africa, and Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to extents usually not recognized, fundamentally African.


http://www.africabib.org/rec.php?RID=159609437&DB=p

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Of considerable interest is the likely racial identity of the Neolithic people at Nabta. Irish (1994) has recognized two major human populations in Africa, based on several diagnostic morphological variants of dental features among modern African populations. One group he relates to Europeans, and identifies as North African, includes the modern population in the Nile Valley from northern Sudan to the Mediterranean.

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Population continuity after all? potential late Pleistocene dental ancestors of Holocene Nubians have been found!
JOEL D. IRISH.

Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks AK

Friday All day, Plaza Level Add to calendar

Since the mid-1960s, some anthropologists have posited biological continuity in late Pleistocene through recent Nubians. However, subsequent dental and skeletal research revealed that a broad range of Holocene samples, all of which share appreciable spatiotemporal phenetic homogeneity, differ significantly from those at the Late Paleolithic sites of Wadi Halfa and Jebel Sahaba. If the latter two Lower Nubian samples are representative of local peoples at that time, then post-Pleistocene discontinuity is implied.

Who, then, were the ancestors of Holocene Nubians? A preliminary comparison of dental nonmetric data in 15 late Pleistocene through early historic Nubian samples (n=795 individuals) with recently discovered remains from al Khiday in Upper Nubia may provide the answer. Dating to at least 9,000+ BP, the new sample (n=40) may be the first of Late Paleolithic age recovered in >40 years; however, until additional fieldwork and dating are conducted, the excavators prefer the more conservative term of "pre-Mesolithic."

Using the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System to record traits and multivariate statistics to estimate pairwise affinities, it is evident that al Khiday is closely akin to most Holocene samples. It is widely divergent from Jebel Sahaba. As such, there does appear to be long-term biological continuity in the region after all – though with late Pleistocene Upper- instead of Lower Nubians. While it cannot be proven that the al Khiday people were directly related, they are, minimally, indicative of what such an ancestor would be like – assuming that phenetic affinities are indicators of genetic variation.

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DENTAL MORPHOLOGY ANALYSIS

Each of the three dentitions was examined for several common dental and osseous non-metric traits (Table 18.1) that are included in the Arizona State University (ASU) Dental Anthropology System . In each case, the traits were dichotomized into categories of present or absent according to standard procedure, based on their appraised morphological thresholds (see Turner 1985). System procedures are based on well-established criteria for scoring intra-trait variation. Only each specimen's highest antimere expressions were analyzed for each trait; this approach maximizes the genetic potential for these polygenic features. (For a comprehensive description of ASU System procedures and traits see Turner et al. 1991).

In previous studies (Irish 1993; 1994; 1997; 1998a,b,c,d; Irish and Turner 1990), up to 36 noncorrelated (per Kendall's tau-b and Spearman's rho) ASU traits were recorded in 30 samples of Late Pleistocene through recent Sub-Saharan and North Africans. Of these 36 traits, it was determined (Irish 1993) that 23 differ significantly (p s 0.05 using Pearson's x2) between pooled samples' from the two geographic regions. Thus, it was decided to use as many of these diagnostic traits as possible to get a cursory indication of whether the E-97- 17, E-00-1, and E-91-1 individuals are phenetically more akin to Sub-Saharan or North Africans. As Henneberg et al. (1980) note, there is uncertainty about the identity of Neolithic Nabta Playa inhabitants. Their provenience places them at a crossroads between the north and south, and their semi-nomadic way of life (Wendorf and Schild 1980; 1984; 1995-96; and elsewhere in this volume) may have brought them into contact with peoples from both regions.

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SITE E-97-17

Because of incompleteness and attrition, only six diagnostic traits (LM3 cusp number, LP1 Tome's root, LC root number, LM2 root number, LM3 torsomolar angle, LM3 presence) could be recorded in the 13 teeth. The dichotomized presence/absence breakpoints are listed under each trait name in Table I 8.1; for comparative purposes, the percentage of individuals with a particular Irait in the Sub-Saharan and North African samples is presented on the right side of the table, along with the total number of individuals for whom the trait was scored.


Based on metric analyses of one mandible from Early Neolithic site E-75-8, Henneberg et al. (1980:392) suggest the Nabta Playa people may have been most similar to ". . .Negroes living south of the Sahara." The present qualitative dental comparison tentatively supports this contention . As Table 18.1 illustrates, the presence or absence of the six E-97-17 traits corresponds with Sub-Saharan trait frequencies. Of the four traits that are present, Sub-Saharan Africans exhibit the highest frequencies ; similarly, for the two traits that are absent, they show the lowest. Fourth molar presence in E-97-17 is also suggestive of a Sub-Saharan affinity . Supernumerary teeth are rare in North Africans (Ruffer 1920, personal observation by author), but occur with greater regularity in populations south of the Sahara (Watters 1958; Irish 1998d).

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SITE E-00-1

Three dental non-metric traits were analyzed in the eight E-00-1 teeth (i.e.rLP1 Tome's root, LC root number, and LM2 root number). These traits are also dichotomized according to ASU procedure and compared to North and Sub-Saharan Africans in Table 18.1. The qualitative comparison is again suggestive of Sub-Saharan affinity for this second Nabta Playa individual . As Table 18.1 shows, the occurrence of traits corresponds with Sub- Saharan frequencies .

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SITE E-91-1

Twenty-one diagnostic ASU System traits were observable in the nearly complete E-91-1 dentition. Of these, four (i.e., Uil labial curvature, U12 interruption groove, UC Bushman Canine, and LMI cusp 7) parallel the North African frequencies. The other 17 traits are more suggestive of Sub-Saharan affiliation (Table 18.1); this finding supports the previous results and those of Henneberg et al. (1980).

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Discussion

Despite an ostensible resemblance to Sub-Saharan Africans in 26 out of 30 observations, the worn, largely incomplete dentitions are only from three individuals who may or may not be representative of the general Nabta Playa population. A proper biological affinity estimate based on dental morphological data requires a larger sample, using more traits from both the mandible and maiIla (Turner 19S5; Irish 1993; 1997, 1998a, b, c, d for examples). Furthermore, in the case of E-97-17, the small teeth with fine mots, interpreted here as female indicators, could be suggestive of a North African linkage; North Africans often exhibit reduced, morphologically simple teeth (Irish 1993; 1996; 1998a, b, c, d). Thus, these initial results should he viewed with caution.

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The initial warming of climate in the Bølling-Allerød interstadial, 12,700-10,900 BCE, brought increased rainfall and warmer conditions in many African regions. Three sets of peoples, speaking languages of the three language families that predominate across the continent today, probably began their early expansions in this period. Nilo-Saharan peoples spread out in the areas around and east of the middle Nile River in what is today the country of Sudan. Peoples of a second family, Niger-Kordofanian (EDIT: to which Niger-Congo and Bantu are offshoots) , spread across an emerging east-west belt of savanna vegetation from the eastern Sudan to the western Atlantic coast of Africa. In the same era, communities speaking languages of the Erythraic branch of the Afrasian (Afroasiatic) family expanded beyond their origin areas in the Horn of Africa, northward to modern-day Egypt.

[...]


In the tenth millennium in the savannas of modern-day Mali, communities speaking early daughter languages of proto-Niger-Congo, itself an offshoot of the Niger-Kordofanian family , began to intensively collect wild grains, among them probably fonio. Their Ounjougou culture is the earliest identified facies of the West African Microlithic, the archaeological complex associated with the early Niger-Congo peoples. Integral to their new subsistence system was their invention of the earliest ceramic technology in world history, between 10,000 and 9500 BCE . Rather than grinding whole grains into flour, the Ounjougou people apparently made the whole grains edible by cooking them in pots.

When did the shift from gathering to the cultivation of grains begin among Niger-Congo peoples? The archaeobotanical evidence is as yet unknown for the crucial periods. Provisional reconstructions of several early Niger-Congo verbs specifically connoting cultivation suggest, however, that the transition from collecting to cultivating grains in the grassland savannas of West Africa took place broadly in the period 9000-6000 BCE. Black-eyed peas and African groundnuts (Vigna subterranea) may have been early cultivated plants along with grains. Niger-Congo peoples certainly domesticated them fairly early because they were among the crops the earliest Bantu took with them into the equatorial rainforests after 3000 BCE.

- Excerpt from : Africa in History by Christopher Ehret

http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Ehret%20Africa%20in%20History%205-5-10.pdf

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The homeland of the Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian (Niger-Congo/Bantu), and Afro-asiatic language is set in the eastern part of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile Belt. Again, this demonstrate the movement of people, culture and ideas across the Sahara-Sahel-Nile belt.

Even in current Africa it's not rare to have multiple languages, ethnic groups and lineages, in the same relatively close geographic location, in the same country. People using multilingualism and/or lingua franca to communicate with each others.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 

From: Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa’s Evolution

Those are a fantastic maps.

I could easily have started my thread with it, especially if it wasn't only covering the eastern-northern part of the Sahara.

Those maps show as its title says that the occupation of Ancient Egypt, Nubia and the Nile were largely in relation to the climate of the time.

Referring to the maps:

A) Before 8500 BCE (late Pleistocene, before the Holocene)
- Because of desert condition of the late Pleistocene there's nobody in the Delta and Lower Egypt (north of Egypt).
- Prehistoric sites along the Nile are overrepresented at Lake Nubia (because of the archaeological rescue missions related to the Aswan high dam) but contrast clearly with the
complete lack of evidence from the desert .
- Lower Nubia is inhabited

B) Between 8500-7000 BCE (early Holocene)
- Groups from the south , already adapted to savannah ecology, extended their traditional way of life following the northward shifting rains.
- Nile dwellers may have left the inhospitable valley.

C) Between 7000-5300 BCE (Mid-Holocene)
- Human settlement became well established throughout the Eastern Sahara
- Local Domestication of Cattle livestock in the Sahara
- Adoption of sheep and goats from the Near East

D) Between 5300 to 3500 BCE (Mid-Holocene)
- Exodus of the population from the Sahara toward the Nile valley (and other regions of Africa) due to the dessication of the Sahara. Foundation of the Ancient Egyptian civilization.

Clearly contrary to what Swenet says above, it's not about population replacement but population movements. Black African population were indigenous to the region and moved their settlements in relation to the climate. It says: Groups from the south , already adapted to savannah ecology, extended their traditional way of life following the northward shifting rains. There were almost no settlements along the Nile during the early-mid Holocene (according to this study) beside at the south (Kharthoum area). That is the 2 maps in the middle. Which is a bit surprising. The document suggest that it was inhospitable. It was then followed by an exodus of the population of the Green Sahara toward the Nile during the dessication of the Sahara.

People must also keep in mind that those maps only cover the eastern-northern part of the Green Sahara. The "wavy-line pottery culture" was extending to the whole Green Sahara and lasted thousands of years.
 

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Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

There were almost no settlements along the Nile during the early-mid Holocene (according to this study) beside at the south (Kharthoum area).

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More on the Nile part of this Sahara-Sahel-Nile.
Not to focus on some of the map's omissions (eg.
a 7400 BCE Early Khartoum industry site at Kerma)
here's an early 1980's UNESCO take on it and the
culture's offshoots and its Saharan relationship


. . . .


 

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Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
 
^ Tukuler, I have read in several books a while back that remnants of these prehistoric and ancient Sudanic cultures still survive today in small pockets among tribes in rural parts of the Kordofan region. Many cultural anthropologists and ethnologists who have been studying these tribes in the Kordofan have long noted certain styles of pottery, tool assemblage, and even the custom of tooth removal to be strikingly similar to those of ancient and prehistoric cultures elsewhere in North Africa. It's a shame but just as some cultural anthropologists who've studied Sa'idi and Baladi culture in Egypt have pointed out traces and survivals of pharaonic culture, many archaeologists or Egyptologists don't bother to 'connect the dots' or don't collaborate with the ethnologists. Perhaps due to the obvious 'racial' issue of these cultural traits surviving in the black communities only.

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

Ethnicity of the population at Nabta Playa:

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Of considerable interest is the likely racial identity of the Neolithic people at Nabta. Irish (1994) has recognized two major human populations in Africa, based on several diagnostic morphological variants of dental features among modern African populations. One group he relates to Europeans, and identifies as North African, includes the modern population in the Nile Valley from northern Sudan to the Mediterranean. The other, which he calls Sub-Saharan, occurs through most of Africa south of the Sahara. All of the individuals of Baqar Late Neolithic at Nabta are, like the Jerar Early Neolithic burial at Site E-91-1, within the Sub-Saharan group, and differ from those in the Nile Valley who are included in the North African group (Irish, Chapter 18, this volume). A larger sample is needed to be certain, but this limited evidence suggests that, at least since the later part of the Early Neolithic if not before, the cattle pastoralists in the southern part of the Egyptian Eastern Sahara had close physical ties with sub-Saharan Africa .

- Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara: Volume 1: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa (Chap 25: Conclusions, p 671)

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Like the DNA Tribes results on the Ancient Egyptians mummy DNA this may surprise some people on this site. Nabta inhabitants don't only match African people but people from inner Africa under the Sahara.

While I personally don't mind typifying the African category by excluding non-native Africans (any people who left Africa during the OOA migration, including those the products of a back migration) contrary to Keita (seemingly) and many people on this site. This goes a bit far from me as it exclude northern Sudanese and southern Egyptians many of whom are black indigenous Africans. In fact, many Nubians still lives along the Nile river. Fur people still live in Northern Sudan, almost all Northern Sudanese are black Africans, etc.

Still even by using this very restrictive categorization detrimental to the African category (since when Northern Sudanese are Europeans?!?), the Nabta Playa populations matches African populations. Linking them with the rest of the African populations in the Sahara-Sahel-Nile belt who now occupy the major part of Africa from (mainly) the southern part of the Maghreb and Egypt up to the tip of South Africa.

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Beyoku and Swenet are correct. The Irish dental study was discussed too many times before in this forum. You should be aware that these same dental studies in Northern Sudan which show so-called "caucasoid" traits as well as craniofacial studies labeling them as "caucasoid" does not stand with the genetic findings of these same remains which show them to carry hg A associated with southern Sudanese. Again, this is all based on debunked racial thinking on Africans being true "negro" vs. "caucasian". Northern Sudanese and of course Egyptians were as much African as southern Sudanese or southern African Khoisan.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 

Distribution of Sites with Early Domestic Cattle in Africa from Cattle Before Crops: The Beginnings of Food Production in Africa by Marshall and Hildebrand
Link:Cattle Before Crops: The Beginnings of Food Production in Africa


This is another great map. Clearly, the domestication of cattle happened in the Sahara-Sahel-Nile belt.

From the document we got:
-Bir Kiseiba 9500 BP
-Nabta Playa 8840 BP
-Enneri Bardague (Tibesti) 7400BP
-Acarus 7400-6700 BP
-Nile Valley: No early domestication of cattle

Here's some interesting quotes from the document:

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After being deserted during the last glacial maximum, the Sahara was repopulated c. 9500 BP by hunter-gatherers who used ceramics with distinctive wavy-line decorative motifs. This cultural complex , scattered across North Africa, is variously referred to as Khartoum Mesolithic (Arkell, 1949), Epipaleolithic (Close, 1995), or Aqualithic (Sutton, 1977).

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With concepts of ownership based on storage facilities and ceramics, some of these groups in the central and southern Sahara probably followed a delayed-return strategy of hunting and gathering (Barich, 1998; Dale et al., in press; Di Lernia, 2001).

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Archaeological evidence suggests that cattle were domesticated in the eastern Sahara during the tenth millennium BP. Nabta, located in the driest part of the Sahara, received too little rainfall at this time (less than 300mmp. a.) to sustain wild cattle. Domestication probably took place slightly farther west, in areas capable of supporting cattle.

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Ritual use of cattle may also have provided a specific context in which scheduled consumption would have been especially desirable.
[...]
Rituals associated with cattle may have occurred at seasonal meetings of pastoral groups or lineages, and helped to consolidate emerging social and political networks.

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Like the “perfect storm,” the precise conditions that precipitated domestication occurred rarely in North Africa. They converged during the tenth millennium in areas of the eastern Sahara that were wet enough for wild cattle but dry enough to be risky, and were populated by hunter-gatherers with social organization conducive to resource intensification [Edit:delayed return hunter-gatherers with storage technology (ceramics) and concepts of ownership]. Archaeological, genetic, and climatic evidence together suggest that domestic cattle spread from a point origin—perhaps a small playa near the Jebel Marra massif in northwest Sudan, or east of the Tibesti in northeastern Chad— during the tenth–ninth millennium BP.

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:


From: Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa’s Evolution

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Nabta as a Regional Ceremonial Center

A major contribution of the work at Nabta and Bir Kiseiba is the information it has yielded on the early development of the African Cattle Complex (Herskovits 1926). It has been widely believed that this complex was a relatively recent development, probably appearing and spreading through Africa during the Iron Age, and that it and the cattle were ultimately derived from Southwest Asia. This view is no longer valid. The cattle remains from Nabta, and from several other Early. Middle and Late Neolithic Localities in the Egyptian Sahara together with the new mtDNA data and linguistic studies, are strong evidence that cattle pastoralism has a long history in North Africa, and that it may have begun in the Eastern Sahara. The cattle remains at site E-75-8. together with the large stone alignment the cattle tumuli, the Calendar Click, and the Complex Stone Structures, suggest that durìng the Baqar Late Neolithic, Nabta probably functioned as a regional ceremonial center. It may have been similar to those still used by many Saheian and Sub-Saharan cattle pastoralists. These African groups are often divided into sections or lineages, and the ceremonial centers serve as foci of religious, political, and social functions for the entire group. They represent nodes in the sacred, political and economic geography of a regional group, thereby functioning as political as well as religious centers. However, a bit of caution is warranted. While there is strong evidence that the Nabta Basin was a ceremonial center, that it served to integrate separate groups, sections or lineages still need to be confirmed.

The excavations of the Complex Stone Structures or Shrines suggested that they are probably an expression of an elaborate and previously unsuspected Late Neolithic ceremonialism. This may be connected with a burial complex, but it has not as yet been determined if these megalithic structures at Nabta are shrines, or if they mark burial chambers or memorials. And while the degree of social control involved in their construction is not as yet established, the planning of the structures, the work required to quarry and transport the possible cow effigy shaped stone, the effort used to dig the enormous pit or ramp needed to place it, and the time demanded to shape that stone and the underlying mushroom rock, all clearly imply a major commitment over a significant period of time. As we shall see, however, elaborate structures can sometimes be erected without strong evidence of social complexity.


In the Western Desert of Egypt, this complex of ceremonial structures at Nabta appears to be unique. Although there is an unstudied tumulus in a basin between Nabta and Bir Kiseiba, and four groups of large rocks that may be an alignment at Bir Mur (Connor 1984a:391), they are isolated features, and their relationship to Nabta is unknown. It is possible that they represent peripheral manifestations of the more highly developed ceremonial phenomena at Nabta.


Unfortunately, the archaeology of that part of northern Sudan immediately south of Nabta is not well known , except for surveys and test excavations in two areas, one near Laqiya Arbain and the other in the Wadi Howar (Kuper 1986; Richter 1989; Schuck 1989). Farther south, however, there are several much later but potentially very interesting sites that may relate to the Nabta ceremonial phenomena. These sites, as yet not studied in detail, are located about 1400 km south and slightly west of Nabta, in the vicinity of Malha Crater in northern Darfur. The area today is near the Sahelian- Desert transition, with a rainfall of around 115 mm per year. The preliminary accounts describe numerous earthen mounds, some of which are very large. These mounds are located close to a group of late prehistoric "cities" that are segmented into distinct units and special precincts. The arrangements of these towns suggest multiple sections or lineages. We do not know if they were farmers or mixed farmers and pastoralists, because very little work has been done at these sites. They are tentatively dated between 3000 and 4000 bp , when the lake sediments in the crater indicate an interval of greater precipitation (Dumont and El Moghraby 1993). Of interest here is the position of the burial mounds in special precincts away from the settlements, an arrangement that resembles the placement of the complex shrines at Nabta. At the very least, these Malha communities indicate that large and complex groups could function successfully in areas of very limited rainfall.


Elsewhere in North Africa, archaeological evidence of presumed regional ceremonial centers with megalithic alignments, burial mounds, and stone circles similar to those at Nabta have been found in Sahelian and Sub- Saharan Africa from Ethiopia to Senegal and north to the Maghreb (Camps 1953; Connah 1987; Desplagnes 1951; Fergussort 1872;Joussame 1974, 1985; Milburn 1988; Tuner 1981). They are particularly numerous in West Africa where there are literally thousands of tumuli and megaliths (Martin and Becker 1974, 1984). Most of these have not been dated, but they are usually assigned to the Iron Age or later. Apparently, the oldest of these features in the Sahara, roughly contemporary with the structures at Nabta, are the tumuli at Site i at Adrar Bous in Niger, with radiocarbon dates of 6350 and 6200 bp (Pa-330 and Pa-753; Roset 1987a; 198Th; Paris 1995; 1996b). Remains of disarticulated and burned cattle were found in these dated tumuli. There are two older radiocarbon dates of 7440 bp and 6700 bp associated with megaliths in the Central African Republic, but both have been rejected as too old (Vidai 1969; Bayle des Hermens 1975:260-261).


Some of these regional centers in the Upper Nile are still in use . In some instances these centers include mounds built over sacrificed cattle, while other mounds cover burials of prominent leaders (Bedri 1939:131; Howell 1948:53). A modern Dinka shrine , constructed on the border between several tribal groups, has become a focal point and national symbol for the Sudanese liberation movement (Johnson 1990:53). Myths associated with these regional centers also serve to define the territorial claims of the groups identified with the shrine and to legitimize the authority of those with spiritual power (Leinhardt 196 :98).


The ethnographic literature of Sahelian and Sub- Saharan Africa, particularly Sudan, the Upper Nile, and eastern Chad , describes many close resemblance's between features at Nabta and those found in regional ceremonial centers in that region. These accounts also help us understand the kind of society that may have functioned at Nabta.


Many cattle pastoralists, such as the Habana and Reni Helba Baggara tribes, who live in the hyper-arid area of northern Darfur , and the Gura'an in adjacent Chad , have economies in which hunting and gathering are significant. In some instances they supplement their cattle resources and gathering activities by having a symbiotic relationship with a group of hunters who provide meat (Nicolaisen 1968). Another solution is found among the Baggara tribes in northern Kordofan who not only gather plant foods, but also use drought tolerant camels as well as cattle (Asad 1970; Lampen 1933; Seligman and Seligman 1918). A few pastoralists also cultivate gardens (Cunnison 1966). The possibility of a symbiotic relationship with specialized hunting groups is a possibility but there is no direct evidence. During the Early Neolithic, that is before 7000 bp, cattle are not present in any of the studied sites located west of Bir Kiseiba sites with only wild fauna occur, and there may have been some exchange with the cattle herders, but there is no evidence that it occurred. The associated floral and faunal remains confirm that cattle pastoralists at Nabta were dependent on both hunting and gathering, and the cattle herders also could have done their own hunting.


The modern cattle pastoralists living in northern Darfur and Kordofan are now Moslems, and traces of their earlier beliefs are scant (Asad 1970; Lampen 1933; Seligman and Seligman 1918). In other aspects, however, the lives of these modern cattle pastoralists living in this hyper-arid area are in many respects similar to those of the non-Moslem cattle pastoralists living today along the Upper Nile in central and southern Sudan. The populations of the tribes living in northern Darfur are smaller, and their herds are not as numerous as those living in the better-watered areas to the south, but they share the same emphasis on cattle: milk and blood are important sources of food; they use cattle for bride payments and to settle blood debts and determine wealth and prestige, and they never kill cattle for their meat except on ceremonial occasions. Although most groups live in the desert throughout the year, the Baggara who live in northern Kordofan have strong ties with the Nubians who live along the Nile near Dongola and during periods of extreme drought they move to the river.


The political system of the northern Darfur tribes usually include an overall tribal leader whose position is inherited in the male line, and who has final authority over all disputes and issues regarding the well-being of the tribe. The authority of these leaders is limited, largely because the lineages can function independently. Strong leaders seem to have emerged only at times of special need, such as warfare or other crisis, and do not seem to have been able to maintain that authority alter the emergency had passed. The tribes are divides into several lineages or sections that are sometimes territorial. Each lineage has a leader who is responsible to the tribal leader, and whose position is also inherited.


Probably because of their Moslem belief, the ceremonial life of these northern Sudanese tribes does not appear to emphasize rain-making, although and lineage tribal leaders sometimes conduct simple ceremonies seeking rain. There are shrines or sacred places, but very little is known about them. Similar sacred places also occur among Moslem groups in West Africa where this belief system associated with sacred places has an important role in maintaining social cohesion during periods of climatic change.


Moving to the Upper Nile, almost all of the animistic tribes in this area are cattle pastoralists . Cattle dominate their lives: they are their primary wealth, they are used to pay bride-payments and blood fines, and they are the basis for prestige. Among most of these groups the rain-makers are the most common religious figures. These rain-makers derive their power from ancestral spirits and may be either the embodiment of their high god, or more frequently, serve as an intermediary with that god to bring rain, so the grass will grow and their cattle will flourish. The rain-maker is usually the most important person in the tribe; he resolves disputes as the final authority, and he is responsible for all public life. Most are also wealthy, and to demonstrate his importance and wealth, an unusually powerful Nuer ruler sacrificed numerous cattle and covered them with an earthen mound (Herskovits 1926:28). The power of these rainmakers is limited, however, because of the ability of the sections or lineages to function independently. The rainmakers also live precarious lives; they are often killed when rain fails to come, and they are also killed when they become ill or grow old. On the other hand, some of the East African cattle pastoralists, such as the Shuluk, who lack rain-makers (Seigman and Seigmart 1932), are led by a king who is regarded as the embodiment of their god . These kings have much greater power and they usually control larger groups than the rain-makers.


There are many kinds of shrines used by groups living along the Upper Nile, most of them are simple decorated poles, referred to as "mobile shrines.' Among the Bari and the Lotuko , the rain-maker shrines consist of a circle of large upright stones with a mosaic of smaller flat stones in the center (Seligman and Seigman 1932:288, 330). The Nuba also have circles of large upright stones with smaller flat stones in the center that are used by the men when the)' perform the new fire ceremony (Seligman and Seligman 1932:343-344). Among the Kalenjin in Kenyas tribal elders sometimes sit against upright stones set in a circle (Fosnaflsky 1966).


Most of the modern Nilotic cattle pastoralists bury their dead in simple shallows graves with a small decorated stick or pole shrine nearby. Cattle are sometimes sacrificed as part of the ceremony particularly for their leaders and the wealthy. Burial among the Nuba and the Moro, however, is in chambers about 2.5 m in diameter and from 2 to 3m below the surface that are reached by shafts dug from the surface (Seligman and Seligman 1932:404, 486).

- Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara: Volume 1: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa (Chap 25: Conclusions)

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Originally posted by beyoku:
^ For the 20th time, do you have that book? In soft copy? Been looking for a cheap copy or PDF

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I don't have the book, just read it from a local library and copied the most interesting part that I post here.
 

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Posted by beyoku (Member # 14524) on :
 
cool, wish my local library had it.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Above I already posted a map of Wavy-Line pottery sites and also an article about the oldest African pottery in Mali above in this thread. Here's another table showing the oldest African pottery sites (although the Mali discovery is not included...).



From Round Heads: The Earliest Rock Paintings in the Sahara (2012) by Soukopova
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
While a bit off topic, here's a nice resume of the archaeology of the central Sahara just before the Holocene:

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Archaeology in the Central Sahara

The archaeology of the period between 20,000 and 10,000 BP in the Central Sahara suffers substantial gaps. The lack of excavations and the impossibility of dating surface material mean that we still do not know which cultures occupied this region in the Late Pleistocene. The period before 20,000 BP in the Sahara was preceded by a humid or semiarid period during which a so called Aterian culture existed (Tillet 1997; Garcea 1998). The Aterian industry is considered typically African (Hachid 1998) and it is diffused across the whole Sahara to the Mediterranean coast. The typical artefacts are tanged points and other peduncular tools. Poorly dated, the Aterian was originally thought to be associated with a humid episode between 40,000 and 20,000 BP. However, recent radiocarbon measuring have provided dates that support an age greater than 40,000, namely from 60,000 to 20,000 (Cremaschi,et al. 1998; Garcea 1998) which suggest that this culture lasted much longer than 20,000 years. The evidence from the Acacus shows that the Aterian may be earlier in the Sahara than in coastal Mediterranean Africa. Considering the wide geographical extension and its long time span, different Aterian groups exhibiting various cultural traditions and diverse adaptations must have occupied North Africa.

The final stage of the Aterian culture is not clear. Most scholars believe it ended with the arrival of the supposed hyperarid period at 20,000 BP, provoking the retreat of the Aterians to other zones outside the Sahara (Tillet 1997; Hachid 1998; Barich 1998a). According to Tillet (1997) the Aterian at Adrar Bous in Niger did not last until the Neolithic since there is, following the Aterian and after a long arid interval, a pre-Neolithic industry, called Ounanian. This represents a new cultural element that is not typologically intermediate between the Aterian and the Neolithic. There remains a blank period between 20,000 and 12,000 BP, which may be explained by the unfavourable arid climatic conditions. However, the same author points out that the Aterian at Adrar Bous dated at 18,000 BP may indicate that life was perhaps still possible in the Sahara due to the existence of a few springs running on the mountain piedmonts. This would imply that the borders of Central Saharan massifs could have served as refuges for Aterian populations (Tillet 1997:19).

From Round Heads: The Earliest Rock Paintings in the Sahara (2012) by Soukopova

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Our excavations have enabled us to learn quite a bit about how these people lived. They inhabited settlements that were most likely composed of huts with external stone-laid hearths. Men and livestock alike drank groundwater that was drawn from deep wells. By these late Neolithic times, humans had for thousands of years already known techniques of ceramic-making, smoothing stone tools, and producing quern-stones for grinding. The inhabitants of these settlements attached great importance to adorning and decorating themselves, as is evidenced by the extensive cosmetic artifacts that have been unearthed, including various sorts of pigments, palettes used for processing them, and ornamental containers for storing them. Such late Neolithic people’s chief means of survival came from breeding the local aurochs, long since domesticated, and to a smaller extent from breeding small ruminants, sheep, and goats.

After the annual damp season subsided, these shepherds drove their animals out into the vast plains, now turned green with new grass. For several months of the year they moved from one spot to another, as the savanna became exhausted by grazing. Such migration is evidenced by the scattered remains of thousands of hearths they used at their temporary pastoral campsites.

Livestock was only rarely slain. These people probably ate various sorts of dairy products and presumably also drank the blood of their animals, letting it in small quantities that were easy to regenerate and not harmful to the livestock.

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Three cemeteries

Due to recent discoveries emerging from the careful investigation of three clan burial grounds, we have been able to learn much about the burial practices, beliefs, and also the social organization of these early herders. [...]

All told, there are 67 individuals buried at the three sites . As the remains are relatively well preserved, the age and sex of the deceased can in most cases be identified. Both men and women were buried here, although the latter were in the majority, and there are also children present. The age of the deceased ranged from infancy to somewhat over 40 years old. There are no signs of any sort of social stratification, usually manifest in terms of differences in the size and construction of graves, or in the quantity and quality of the grave goods they contain. Interestingly, even though an anthropological analysis employing such techniques as a detailed inspection of dental features has shown that two different populations - Mediterranean and sub-Saharan - coexisted here , there are no differences of any sort evident in the way they were buried.

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Neolithic beauty

The exceptional wealth of the grave goods is striking. Many deceased were laid to rest with ceramic pots, sometimes beautifully decorated. It seems that vessels of one particular sort, called tulip beakers, were produced exclusively to be used as grave goods. Such pots were usually placed on the chest or near the head. They were accompanied by sets of cosmetic artifacts consisting of flat stone palettes, circular grinding stones for grinding color-bearing minerals, and also containers made of ivory, decorative bovine horn, sandstone, or ceramic. The latter were used to store pigments obtained from various sorts of dark-red or yellow ochre (iron ore), green malachite, and probably also white limestone and black coal. Some of the palettes have preserved traces of these materials to this very day.

Other means of personal adornment included necklaces strung from beads of various types and sizes, made of agate, carnelian, gneiss, fired clay, bone, or snail shells. The smallest of the beads, about two millimeters in diameter with a hole cut straight through them, are astounding in terms of the precision and technique involved in their production: we do not know how their makers bored holes less than a millimeter in diameter through hard stone. Decorative pendants made of bone are sometimes encountered, as are lip and nose plugs made of bone or turquoise. Also highly popular were bracelets wrought from large mussel shells from the Red Sea, or made of ivory. Bone needles, long gazelle bones fashioned into daggers, and also beautifully produced flint knives and flint or agate arrowheads have also been frequently found. Many graves contain large sheets of mica more than 10 cm across and about 1 cm thick. They must have been highly prized, since they were frequently buried in the vicinity of the head of a body. One such slab was shaped into the form of a fish. This sculpting is so accurate and realistic that one archeozoologist, upon observing it, immediately identified the find as depicting a tilapia fish - a species very frequently encountered in the Nile. This is the oldest known sculpture to have been discovered in Egypt. One of the graves also contained a miniature boomerang, or more precisely a throwing stick for hunting, made of bone with a decorative incision. Many burials were also accompanied by polished pebbles of unknown function, made of quartz, agate, or other types of rock.

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It is especially interesting that the cemeteries offer indications that the surviving contemporaries of the people buried here took a keen interest in ensuring that their remains were kept well-preserved . Archeologists have found evidence of such an interest in the form of two skulls which have had some of their upper teeth replanted in the lower jaw, or vice versa. Also, the forearm of one woman was found to be wearing four bracelets which were later, at a time when this was already a bare skeleton, fastened in place with small wedges made of small human bones. Another skull was found to have eighteen teeth placed in the eye hole, while another had three teeth in the nasal aperture. Many burials were sprinkled over with sizeable amounts of hematite dust - a custom widespread in prehistoric times, in both the old and the new world. [...]

These careful efforts to “repair” human remains attest to an exceptional concern for keeping bodies whole, in as undamaged a condition as possible. And so, the idea of preserving the body so that the spirit could rest in peace in the afterworld - a notion so typical of the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians - may indeed have originated with the Neolithic peoples inhabiting the ever-drier savanna in what is today the Western Desert, only centuries prior to the emergence of ancient Egypt.

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Stone monoliths

In the basin of the dried-up Nabta Playa lake, located only 20 km away, the same people who left behind the graveyards at the foot of Gebel Ramlah erected gigantic clusters of stelae, extending over many square kilometers. [...]

This is where the oldest known Egyptian beliefs, as preserved in the Pyramid Texts, maintained that people went after their death.[...]

In recent years, the expedition has discovered a massive kurgan in the Nabta Playa lake basin, towering over the fields of stone monoliths, now destroyed by the desert winds. Its small burial pit was found to contain the head of a child 2.5 to 3 years old, undoubtedly the offspring of a powerful ruler of the Nubian Desert about 3,500 years BC, just prior to the establishment of the first Egyptian state.

We already know that soon after this date, drought forced the herders to abandon these lands. Digging deeper and deeper wells proved insufficient, and people had go elsewhere in search of water. And so where might they have gone, if not to the relatively close Nile Valley? They brought with them the various achievements of their culture and their belief system. Perhaps it was indeed these people who provided the crucial stimulus towards the emergence of state organization in ancient Egypt

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

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Neolithic beauty

The exceptional wealth of the grave goods is striking. Many deceased were laid to rest with ceramic pots, sometimes beautifully decorated. It seems that vessels of one particular sort, called tulip beakers, were produced exclusively to be used as grave goods. Such pots were usually placed on the chest or near the head. They were accompanied by sets of cosmetic artifacts consisting of flat stone palettes, circular grinding stones for grinding color-bearing minerals, and also containers made of ivory, decorative bovine horn, sandstone, or ceramic. The latter were used to store pigments obtained from various sorts of dark-red or yellow ochre (iron ore), green malachite, and probably also white limestone and black coal. Some of the palettes have preserved traces of these materials to this very day.

Other means of personal adornment included necklaces strung from beads of various types and sizes, made of agate, carnelian, gneiss, fired clay, bone, or snail shells. The smallest of the beads, about two millimeters in diameter with a hole cut straight through them, are astounding in terms of the precision and technique involved in their production: we do not know how their makers bored holes less than a millimeter in diameter through hard stone. Decorative pendants made of bone are sometimes encountered, as are lip and nose plugs made of bone or turquoise. Also highly popular were bracelets wrought from large mussel shells from the Red Sea, or made of ivory. Bone needles, long gazelle bones fashioned into daggers, and also beautifully produced flint knives and flint or agate arrowheads have also been frequently found. Many graves contain large sheets of mica more than 10 cm across and about 1 cm thick. They must have been highly prized, since they were frequently buried in the vicinity of the head of a body. One such slab was shaped into the form of a fish. This sculpting is so accurate and realistic that one archeozoologist, upon observing it, immediately identified the find as depicting a tilapia fish - a species very frequently encountered in the Nile. This is the oldest known sculpture to have been discovered in Egypt. One of the graves also contained a miniature boomerang, or more precisely a throwing stick for hunting, made of bone with a decorative incision. Many burials were also accompanied by polished pebbles of unknown function, made of quartz, agate, or other types of rock.

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A lot of similarities with burial goods of later and contemporary Badarian/Nubian sites.

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It is especially interesting that the cemeteries offer indications that the surviving contemporaries of the people buried here took a keen interest in ensuring that their remains were kept well-preserved . Archeologists have found evidence of such an interest in the form of two skulls which have had some of their upper teeth replanted in the lower jaw, or vice versa. Also, the forearm of one woman was found to be wearing four bracelets which were later, at a time when this was already a bare skeleton, fastened in place with small wedges made of small human bones. Another skull was found to have eighteen teeth placed in the eye hole, while another had three teeth in the nasal aperture. Many burials were sprinkled over with sizeable amounts of hematite dust - a custom widespread in prehistoric times, in both the old and the new world. [...]

These careful efforts to “repair” human remains attest to an exceptional concern for keeping bodies whole, in as undamaged a condition as possible. And so, the idea of preserving the body so that the spirit could rest in peace in the afterworld - a notion so typical of the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians - may indeed have originated with the Neolithic peoples inhabiting the ever-drier savanna in what is today the Western Desert, only centuries prior to the emergence of ancient Egypt.

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Linkage between the burial practices of the Saharo-Sudanese civilization and the Ancient Egyptian culture. Notions typical of the beliefs of Ancient Egyptians as well modern African people (African Ancestral Religions).

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The beginning of the Holocene at Ounjougou

Introduction

The Ogolian, an extremely arid episode beginning in West Africa around 23,000 BP, is represented at Ounjougou by a significant sedimentary and archaeological hiatus. It is not until the return of humid climatic conditions at the beginning of the Holocene that we once again find evidence for humans in this part of the continent. It is thus in a context of heavy rains and recolonization of the vegetal cover, at the beginning of the 10th millennium BC, that a new population was established on the Bandiagara Plateau. At the Ounjougou site complex, several sites have made it possible to define two occupation phases chronologically situated between 10,000 and 7,000 cal BC. Strikingly, the presence of pottery is attested from the first half of the 10th mill. BC. This is the earliest evidence for pottery in sub-Saharan Africa. The use of stone milling material is confirmed from the 8th mill. BC by the discovery of a millstone and grinder.

Issues and objectives

It is thus within a context of climatic and environmental change, of migrations and repopulation of a region of Africa abandoned for several thousand years that the craft of making pottery and the use of milling emerged. Our aims are to better understand the material culture of these Early Holocene populations, to determine their origins and identify their development, and finally to clarify the paleoenvironmental context in which they were established and evolved. Understanding of the mechanisms in which humans invented pottery and milling tools clearly lie at the heart of our research problem. Our main objective is therefore to excavate stratified sites located in the valley base, geologically in situ, to obtain the broadest sample possible of material remains, to situate the site in relative and absolute chronologies and to place them in relation to the geomorphological and archaeobotanical sequence. By comparison to the rare contemporaneous assemblages in West and Saharan Africa, we hope to retrace the route of humans after the vegetation had returned at the beginning of the Holocene. Finally, via systematic survey, we hope to discover contemporaneous site yielding complementary data on these populations, in terms of subsistence economy or the use of space.

The 10th and 9th millennia BC (Phase 1 of the Holocene of Ounjougou)

It is at the site of Ravin de la Mouche that we identify the first Holocene sedimentary sequence, in the form of a channel cut into the yellow Pleistocene silts, infilled with coarse sand and gravel. The chronological placement of the upper layers of this first group has been determined by 12 radiocarbon dates and 3 OSL dates between 9,400 and 8,400 cal BC. The lithic industry discovered in stratigraphic position shows that unidirectional reduction predominates, but other techniques, such as bipolar reduction on anvil and multidirectional, were also employed. Quartz was the main raw material used and the typological range includes small retouched flakes, borers and especially an original type of bifacial armatures with covering retouch.

Three ceramic sherds are linked to this industry. They all come from the base of the HA1A stratigraphic unit. Their thickness ranges between 4.5 and 7 mm. The only way is refundable on board simple hemispherical bowl of 21 cm diameter. One sherd shows a roulette decoration, which could not be further identified. Microscopic analysis of two samples revealed that they contain a silicate matrix, without carbonates, with 20-30% of non-plastic inclusions. These consist mainly of single crystal quartz well rounded with an edge of recrystallization, with a fine to very fine diameter. These quartz are quite similar to those found in local sandstone and clays. Mineralogical analysis of the nearest clay deposits by X-ray diffraction revealed the presence of kaolinite, whose absence in ceramics indicates a cooking temperature above 550 � C. The pastes were prepared using non-calcareous clays with little prior treatment, as shown by their texture somewhat chaotic. The serial structure indicates that no temper has been added. Only one sherd contains fragments of grog, with a maximum diameter of 4 mm. However, this low percentage may indicate involuntary incorporation during the preparation of the paste.

The 8th millennium BC (Phase 2 of the Holocene of Ounjougou)

The next part of the Holocene sequence is documented at two principal sites – the Ravin du Hibou and Damatoumou. The archaeological layers are chronologically situated by an OSL date and 7 radiocarbon dates (8,000-7,000 cal BC). The lithic industry is characterized by reduction of quartz cobbles by unidirectional, bidirectional, multidirectional, peripheral and bipolar on anvil reduction techniques. The assemblage is composed mainly of microlithic tools: borers, backed points, notches, denticulates, sidescrapers, retouched flakes and geometric microliths.

The next part of the Holocene sequence is documented at two principal sites – the Ravin du Hibou and Damatoumou. The archaeological layers are chronologically situated by an OSL date and 7 radiocarbon dates (8,000-7,000 cal BC). The lithic industry is characterized by reduction of quartz cobbles by unidirectional, bidirectional, multidirectional, peripheral and bipolar on anvil reduction techniques. The assemblage is composed mainly of microlithic tools: borers, backed points, notches, denticulates, sidescrapers, retouched flakes and geometric microliths.

West African and Saharan context

The ceramics and grinding material from phases 1 and 2 at Ounjougou are the earliest evidence of this type currently known in sub-Saharan Africa. In our present state of knowledge, this pottery at Ounjougou may have resulted from a center of invention in the current Sahelo-Sudanian zone with exportation somewhat later toward the Central Sahara, where it is known from the 9th millennium BC. The pottery types at Tagalagal in Niger, the earliest known for this region, were already quite diversified when they first appeared, perhaps confirming the adoption of the use of pottery from another place of origin. The lithic industry of phases 1 and 2 is characterized by southern affinities, including quartz microliths using bipolar reduction on anvil proper to the "sub-Saharan microlithic technocomplex" defined by K. MacDonald, except for the bifacial armatures which are only found in the north, in the Saharan zone, at slightly younger sites. A cultural influx from the southeastern sub-Saharan zone toward the Sahara could explain the spread of quartz microlithic industries across West Africa. First observed in Cameroon at Shum Laka (30,600-29,000 BC), we next find them in the Ivory Coast at Bingerville (14,100-13,400 BC), in Nigeria at Iwo Eleru (11,460-11,050 BC) and finally at Ounjougou (phase 1: 10th mill. BC).

- Eric Huysecom

http://www.ounjougou.org/sec_arc/arc_main.php?lang=en&sec=arc&sous_sec=neo&art=neo&art_titre=ancien

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quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
[QB] ^ Indeed such facts about the origins and formation of Egyptian people and culture have been known by academia for a while now, yet are largely unknown by the general public. Hence, why the fallacy of the division between 'North' and 'Sub-Sahara'

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quote:

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Originally posted by anguishofbeing:
Aren't you one of those interested in portraying AE "as off-white Arabesque people instead of the (black) Africans they truly were"? Now Lioness produce denies he said Roman civilization was primarily white etc etc. LOL

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quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:

The proper distinction is between the Mahgreb and the Sahel because the Sahel is comprised of ancestry which is primarily Sub Saharan African while the Maghreb on average is not.

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quote:

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Egyptian civilization is a different situation because it is based on the Nile river which extends further south into Sub Saharan Africa as well as being a country with the only land route to Asia.

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quote:

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For instance someone could raise the issue of who were the Sahelians? But no one seems to care to.
And if someone said they are primarily African somebody else could say "but they are North African and North Africans have significant ancestry from outside of Africa"

That is why the term "North African" should be used less or not at all in many cases. It is too broad.
In many cases it is best to talk about the Maghreb, the Sahel and Egypt instead of "North Africa"

But I think people want "North Africa" to be used so they have the flexibility to say what ever is said about it is wrong and this can be done by people of different viewpoints.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
another fake quote uisng his own terms "off-white" and " Arabesque"

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quote:

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Originally posted by anguishofbeing:
^"As further evidence of my mulatto theory and ancient interracial sex "back-to-Africa" Asians into North Africa = no blacks" - Lioness

quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:
another fake quote uisng his own terms "off-white" and " Arabesque"

---

My own terms? LOL It's Mary's. The Jackass accuses others of not being interested in the topic when he's the one not following the threads. Pure troll.

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Posted by anguishofbeing (Member # 16736) on :
 
Aren't you suppose to be at the Trayvon vigil? Or was it the dead druggie diva? lol
 

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Posted by asante-Korton (Member # 18532) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by anguishofbeing:
Aren't you suppose to be at the Trayvon vigil? Or was it the dead druggie diva? lol

---

quote:

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Originally posted by anguishofbeing:
I have to admit my mom is a fat Slut.

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quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:

"We propose that present-day ancestry in North Africa is the result of at least three distinct episodes: ancient “back-to-Africa” gene flow prior to the Holocene, more recent gene flow from the Near East resulting in a longitudinal gradient, and limited but very recent migrations from sub-Saharan Africa.

Henn, 2012"

Swenet accepts this as possibly true. He's the master

---

I'd prefer to hear it from Swenet himself as you have the penchant for dishonestly proclaiming what others say.

More recent gene flow from the Near East reflecting a longitudinal gradient is obvious from the historical facts of Arab-Islamic conquest. What I question are the other claims. Exactly what evidence is there of a "Back-to-Africa" even prior to the Holocene?? And how could there be very limited recent migrations from Sub-Sahara when during the Holocene there was no Sahara?? Appeal to authority is not an answer whether that authority is Hen et. al or Swenet.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Here's a very interesting document about the Ancient Saharan civilization discussed in this thread and the formation of Ancient Egypt. I will post the abstract and document link first then discuss it:

quote:

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Dr. Alain Anselin (University of Antilles-Guyane) Some notes about an early African pool of cultures from which emerged Egyptian civilization.

Abstract

Using primarily linguistic evidence, and taking into account recent archaeology at sites such as Hierakonpolis/Nekhen, as well as the symbolic meaning of objects such as sceptres and headrests in Ancient Egyptian and contemporary African cultures, this paper traces the geographical location and movements of early peoples in and around the Nile Valley. It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could be located to the south of Upper Egypt or, earlier, in the Sahara . The marked grammatical and lexicographic affinities of Ancient Egyptian with Chadic are wellknown, and consistent Nilotic cultural, religious and political patterns are detectable in the formation of the first Egyptian kingships. The question these data raise is the articulation between the languages and the cultural patterns of this pool of ancient African societies from which emerged Predynastic Egypt .

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http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/6121162/1735188988/name/anselin.pdf
 

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Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
 
Let us examine this citation lyinass brought up.

" We propose that present-day ancestry in North Africa is the result of at least three distinct episodes: ancient “back-to-Africa” gene flow prior to the Holocene, more recent gene flow from the Near East resulting in a longitudinal gradient, and limited but very recent migrations from sub-Saharan Africa.--Henn, 2012"

Does she even know what the Holocene even is? It is an epoch that began 11.5 thousand years ago. So what exactly is this Asian gene-flow that happened prior to the Holocene? No doubt she is referring to U6 though U6's presence in Africa is dated to 30,000 years ago allegedly resulting from people from Asia who also brought R0 into Sudan and East Africa before that 50,000 years ago. And how did these Asians (from Southwest Asia i.e. Levant and Arabia right next to Africa) look like?? Did they look any different from African right next door to them? Were they 'white' enough to produce light-skinned 'mulatto' looking offspring??

Answer: NO, not according to the skeletal records for that time!

Nazlet Khater Man


Nazlet Khater is the oldest known modern human of Egypt dating to 33,000 years bp. That's at around the same time U6 is said to have arose in Africa and well after R0 arrived in Africa. R0 is common in East Africa both in the Sudan as well as the Horn.

In the sum, the results obtained further strengthen the results from previous analyses. The affinities between Nazlet Khater, MSA, and Khoisan and Khoisan related groups re-emerges. In addition it is possible to detect a separation between North African and sub-saharan populations, with the Neolithic Saharan population from Hasi el Abiod and the Egyptian Badarian group being closely affiliated with modern Negroid groups. Similarly, the Epipaleolithic populations from Site 117 and Wadi Halfa are also affiliated with sub-Saharan LSA, Iron Age and modern Negroid groups rather than with contemporaneous North African populations such as Taforalt and the Ibero-maurusian. -- Pierre M. Vermeersch (Author & Editor), 'Palaeolithic quarrying sites in Upper and Middle Egypt', Egyptian Prehistory Monographs Vol. 4, Leuven University Press (2002).

Both hypotheses are compatible with the hypothesis proposed by Brothwell (1963) of an East African proto-Khoisan Negro stock which migrated southwards and westwards at some time during the Upper Pleistocene, and replaced most of the local populations of South Africa. Under such circumstances, it is possible that the Nazlet Khater specimen is part of a relict population of this proto-Khoisan Negro stock which extended as far north as Nazlet Khater at least until the late part of the Late Pleistocene. --- The Position of the Nazlet Khater Specimen Among Prehistoric and Modern African and Levantine Populations, Ron Pinhasi, Departent of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, U.K., Patrick Semal, Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium; Journal of Human Evolution (2000) vol. 39.

This makes you wonder how the people of Southwest Asia at that time looked. Just how did the Levantine and Arabian folk during and prior to Nazlet Khater??

Again, they weren't light-skinned 'Caucasians'! LOL
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
^^^ The skeleton is African in origin no doubt but and thus he's probably not from the Haplogroup U6. He's probably from an African hg.

Haplogroup U6 is descendent from the Haplogroup U which originate in Eurasia and Hg U is descended from haplogroup R which also originate outside Africa (South Asia possibly). It's not what you believe but it's what geneticists believe (and they seem to be right looking at those hg distribution frequency in the world).
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
U is African
H is African.

Read enough and you will see that.

I very much doubt there are really ANY true West Asian HG that back-migrated to Africa.


=======
MtDNA Profile of West Africa Guineans: Towards a Better Understanding of the Senegambia Region(2004)

Alexandra Rosa1,2, Anto¢¥ nio Brehm2,∗, Toomas Kivisild1, Ene Metspalu1 and Richard Villems1


European Lineages: U5

Ten individuals out of 372 samples, all related to Fulbe groups, carried mtDNA variants typical of western Eurasia, particularly Europe. Within these mtDNAs belonging to haplogroup U5 nine Fulanis share one particular HVS-I haplotype. BOTH HAPLOTYPES ARE ONLY ONE MUTATIONAL STEP AWAY FROM A COMMON NODE WIDESPREAD IN EUROPE


TRANSLATION: The Fulanis are one mutational step away from being European¡¦.no! no! The European women are one mutational step away from being Fulanis'.!!!!

Although U5 is one of the most frequent mtDNA variants among western Eurasians (about 460 sequences in our mtDNA HVS-I database) no exact matches to the two Guinean haplotypes were found, as would be expected in the case of recent admixture. On the other hand, the Fulani U5 haplotype appears in a data set of West Africans (Wolof and Serer, Rando et al. 1998) and in Moroccans (unpublished data), pointing to the existence of a common African founder lineage of haplogroup U5..
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
While the cats away.....

Ignorance is bliss.

U3 is African
U6 is African
U5 is African
H1 is african
HV is African.

All have highest frequency, age and diversity IN Africa.

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
" We propose that present-day ancestry in North Africa is the result of at least three distinct episodes: ancient “back-to-Africa” gene flow prior to the Holocene, more recent gene flow from the Near East resulting in a longitudinal gradient, and limited but very recent migrations from sub-Saharan Africa.

Henn, 2012"

Swenet accepts this as possibly true. He's the master

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

The skeleton is African in origin no doubt but and thus he's probably not from the Haplogroup U6. He's probably from an African hg.

Haplogroup U6 is descendent from the Haplogroup U which originate in Eurasia and Hg U is descended from haplogroup R which also originate outside Africa (South Asia possibly). It's not what you believe but it's what geneticists believe (and they seem to be right looking at those hg distribution frequency in the world).

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
While the cats away.....

Ignorance is bliss.

U3 is African
U6 is African
U5 is African
H1 is african
HV is African.

All have highest frequency, age and diversity IN Africa.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
While the cats away.....

Ignorance is bliss.

U3 is African
U6 is African
U5 is African
H1 is african
HV is African.

All have highest frequency, age and diversity IN Africa.

quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:
" We propose that present-day ancestry in North Africa is the result of at least three distinct episodes: ancient “back-to-Africa” gene flow prior to the Holocene, more recent gene flow from the Near East resulting in a longitudinal gradient, and limited but very recent migrations from sub-Saharan Africa.

Henn, 2012"

Swenet accepts this as possibly true. He's the master

---

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
European woman are African migrants

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quote:

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Originally posted by Djehutie:

LOL

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Any haplogroup can be predecessor back-tracked to Africa Therefore you will use that to suggest there is no such thing as back migrations. Any haplogroup named you will say is African, that's your game, except token ones very small obscure populations of lesser historical significance you might try to throw in. By your logic modern Europeans are African
Also read some of the new 2013 DNA articles I recently posted

-Genome-Wide Diversity in the Levant 2013

-Pastoral and farmer populations of the African Sahel:Y chromosomes 2013

-Genomic Admixture within Southern Africa 2013

lioness productions
 

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Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
 
^ Yes, I can't help but get the feeling Xyzman wants to deny any back-migrations to Africa during prehistoric times. It wasn't like there was a barrier that prevented peoples in Asia from returning to Africa. Really it shouldn't make a difference anyway because these Southwest Asians were no different from their African brethren right next door.

Again, I cite Keita.

The issue of how much Paleolithic migration from the Near East there may have been is intriguing, and the mitochondrial DNA variation may need to be reassessed as to what can be considered to be only of "Eurasian origin" because if hunters and gatherers roamed between the Saharan and supra-Saharan regions and Eurasia it might be difficult to determine exactly "where" a mutation arose.-- Keita, In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory ed. John Benjamins. (2008)

As Keita pointed out, during paleolithic times peoples were constantly moving back and forth between Eurasia, specifically Southwest Asia and Africa. Thus you have clades in Asia dating prior to the Holocene that are African in origin as well such as mtDNA hg M1 and NRY hg E2. Funny how the Euronuts hate to point out the African ancestry among Asiatics. Also, why are Euronuts in such a rush to claim North Africans using maternal lineages but not Sub-Saharan Africans using paternal lineages?--Why aren't they as enthusiastic to share 'Eurasian' kinship with hg R1 males of Cameroon?

This is why I subscribe to Takruri's way of thinking to break free of any Eurocentric boundaries or limitations. Why is Southwest Asia i.e. the Levant and Arabia considered 'Asian' and not an extension of Africa yet 'Europe' is often viewed as a separate continent entirely even though it's obviously part of Asia. It's just blatant double-think.
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
The problem is many cite and read stuff and have no clue what it means. Clear eg is the Henn paper you keep citing.

The title of the Henn study is not backed-up in the body of the document. Henn concluded that only nrY and other Uniparental study should be used to confirm their thesis. But we know the results of those markers already.

DNATrbies used extensive, live data(SNP) and proved Henn wrong. Henn data was limited.

In case you missed it both Henn and DNATribes used autosomal SNPs as their markers. However Henn used a population with clear African substrate(Qatar) and was still inconclusive. They tried to "fix" the result. Using the Levant was out of the question.

DNATribes got it right. There is no Levant admixture or back migration in the Sahara. However there is clear South Saharan and Saharan admixture in Arabia.
 

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Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
 
In the future when DNA profiling is standard medical proceedure people might start idenitifying themselves primarily by haplogroup letter names and geography and phenotype/race implications taking a lesser prominance. Of course something new some sort of haplogroup bigotry might evolve because we know how humans act, competative by nature
 

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Posted by Son of Ra (Member # 20401) on :
 
I think I can co-sign with Southwest Asia being an extension of Africa.

"High atop a dusty plateau on the Arabian Peninsula, archaeologist Jeffrey Rose picked up a rock, saw something surprising, and started asking questions that could change history. His unusual discoveries in southern Oman help shape new theories about when early humans may have exited Africa, who those pioneers were, and what route they took on the first stage of their journey to every corner of the Earth.

In the late 1990s geneticists identified mitochondrial DNA signatures suggesting that the first humans to leave Africa may have traveled through Ethiopia to Yemen and Oman. Scientists theorized they were beachcombers who followed the coastline. Rose arrived in the area, eager to test the theory that Arabia was the gateway out of Africa by searching for archaeological evidence. "We surveyed for years," he recalls. "Stone Age artifacts littered the landscape; virtually any place I stopped the car, I found a Paleolithic site. But none of it showed a connection to Africa; and along the coast we found no evidence of humans at all."

He and his international team of scientists returned to Oman in 2010, and on the final day of their surveying season, at the last site on their list, "we hit the jackpot." The find was a very specific stone tool technology used by the "Nubian Complex," nomadic hunters from Africa's Nile Valley. Nubian technology is a unique method of making spear points that was previously only known from North Africa. Rose's team ultimately discovered over a hundred workshop sites where these artifacts were manufactured en masse. "It was scientific euphoria," he describes.

The Nubian origin and inland location of the discovery were equally unexpected. "We had never considered the link to Africa would come from the Nile Valley, and that their route would be through the middle of the Arabian Peninsula rather than along the coast," Rose notes. "But that's what the scientific process is all about. If you haven't proven yourself wrong, you haven't made any progress. In hindsight, the Nubian connection makes perfect sense.

The Nile Valley and Oman's Dhofar region are both limestone plateaus, heavily affected by perennial rivers. It's logical that people moved from an environment they knew to another one that mirrored it. At the time when I'm suggesting they expanded out of Africa, southern Arabia was fertile grassland. The Indian Ocean monsoon system activated rivers, and as sand dunes trapped water, it became a land of a thousand lakes. It was a paradise for early humans, whose livelihood depended upon hunting on the open savanna."

Accurately dating Rose's Nubian discovery was made possible by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) technology, which can determine the last time a single buried grain of sand was exposed to light by measuring the amount of energy trapped inside of it. The technique revealed the tools to be 106,000 years old, exactly the same time the Nubian Complex flourished in Africa. This also means Rose's theory places the first exit from Africa much earlier than previously believed. "Geneticists have shown that the modern human family tree began to branch out 60,000 years ago. I'm not questioning when it happened, but where. I suggest the great modern human expansion to the rest of the world was launched from Arabia rather than Africa."

Rose's passion for the past extends beyond fieldwork to how science can be shared with the public. "A few years ago, I was going through an incredibly dramatic wadi (valley) in Oman, hours off the beaten track, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could share this place with other people, I bet they'd love to see this." He began shooting short videos every few days and chronicling his work via Twitter updates and website posts. "You can't put into words how unique the landscape here is. Arabia feels like this romantic lost world filled with mysterious ruins; it's a living museum of artifacts. Everyone on Earth had ancestors who passed through this place; why wouldn't you want to show it to people?"

"I'm like a kid in a candy store, there's so much to learn; and now we have so many ways to disseminate information—the Internet, blogs, myriad TV channels, documentaries—it's all making science more interesting, digestible, and relevant to the public," he says. "There's no reason for archaeology and history to be stuffy. How could you not want to know how you got here? It's been said that there's more diversity within a group of 55 chimpanzees than in the entire human population. I think if we help people conceptualize how tiny the genetic distance is between them, it might even help bridge some of the tensions in our world today."

Trying to explain what keeps him based in a desert truck stop, digging through sand, and lugging 100-pound loads of rocks in 100-degree heat, Rose says, "It's like an itch you absolutely have to scratch. An answer you have to find. Who lived here? What were they doing? Are these the people who went on to colonize the entire world? Now that we know it was the Nubians who spread from Africa, I want to know why them in particular? What was it about their technology and culture that enabled them to expand so successfully? And what happened next? That's one of the defining characteristics of our species—we've always looked to the beginning and wanted to understand how we got here. That's what it means to be human."

Source:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/jeffrey-rose/
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
You are really behind the times. As I said many here don't know what's up. Gattaca is here.

NJ is working on a similar law.

===

California Law Would Extend Genetic Non-Discrimination Protections

Published by ScottH under news

UPDATE (9/7/2011) California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law civil rights protections in the state to prevent discrimination against people based on their genetic information.

quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:
In the future when DNA profiling is standard medical proceedure people might start idenitifying themselves primarily by haplogroup letter names and geography and phenotype/race implications taking a lesser prominance. Of course something new some sort of haplogroup bigotry might evolve because we know how humans act, competative by nature

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
However Henn used a population with clear African substrate(Qatar) and was still inconclsive. They tried to "fix" the result. Using the Levant was out of the question.

DNATribes got it right. There is no Levant admixture or back migration in the Sahara. However there is clear South Saharan and Saharan admixture in Arabia. [/QB]

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quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:
Perhistoric Arabia and the whole Middle East could be called and an extension of Africa but not the historical period when written record begins. By that time the region is semi African and has transformed and also taken in various ethnicities from surrounding regions

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quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
While the cats away.....

Ignorance is bliss.

U3 is African
U6 is African
U5 is African
H1 is african
HV is African.

All have highest frequency, age and diversity IN Africa.

---

I know about U6 and read about U5 but where is your evidence for U3, H1, and HV?

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
PROVE ME WRONG!!

Quote: Any haplogroup can be predecessor back-tracked to Africa Therefore you will use that to suggest there is no such thing as back migrations. Any haplogroup named you will say is African,..... that's your game

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
My guess is ...everything started in the Sahara and migrated out...away from the Sahara.

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
My guess is ...everything started in the Sahara and migrated out...away from the Sahara.

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
a Sample

quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
While the cats away.....

Ignorance is bliss.

U3 is African
U6 is African
U5 is African
H1 is african
HV is African.

All have highest frequency, age and diversity IN Africa.

---

I know about U6 and read about U5 but where is your evidence for U3, H1, and HV?

---

 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
I posted above the abstract of the document called Some Notes about an Early African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged the Egyptian Civilisation by Anselin (click to download)

Here's some of the most interesting passages related to the Saharan-Sahel-Nile civilization and its linkage with the formative years of Ancient Egypt.

Conclusion:

- The most likely scenario could be this: some of these Saharo-Nubian populations spread southwards to Wadi Howar, Ennedi and Darfur; some stayed in the actual oases where they joined the inhabitants; and others moved towards the Nile, directed by two geographic obstacles, the western Great Sand Sea and the southern Rock Belt.

- The Western Egyptian Sahara, and the Nile Valley, was, from 6000 BC to 3500 BC, a true zone of linguistic compression , as defined by Jungraithmayr and Leger (1993).

- Conceptual vocabulary shared by contemporary Chadic-speakers, Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian speakers suggests that the Western Egyptian Sahara was the northern region of this wider contact area that became a zone of linguistic and cultural compression following its desertification .


- If we consider all languages as the archive of their civilisation, the Egyptian vocabulary reflects a lengthy ancient pooling of cultural features from Chadic-speakers and Nilo-Saharan-speakers, shepherds of the Western Sahara.


An interesting example of lexical items between Chadic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo speakers (see others in the text) for the word Medu Neter (meaning hieroglyph in Ancient Egyptian language).

- ‘Lord of the mdw nTr’ means ‘Lord of Spoken Words’, rather than ‘Lord of Written Words’ or ‘Lord of Script’, , nb sS. ‘The mdw ntr were primarily not signs but words’ (Boylan 1922, 94). The Egyptian word, mdw (Demotic: md(.t)) has a broad and contemporary peripheral range of cognates: Chadic: Kwami: màad-, ‘to say’; Cushitic: Afar: mad’a, ‘speech’; Nilo-Saharan: Teda: meta, ‘to speak’, medi, ‘speech’; and Niger-Congo: Fulfulde: medd-, met-, ‘to speak’ (Anselin 2006b, 147)

- Headrests are known in many African cultures : Cushitic (for example, Beja, Oromo, Somalia), Nilotic (for example, Nyangatom, Turkan), Bantu (for example, Luba, Cokwe, Kuba), Zande and Dogon (Lam 2003). In the Nyangatom culture, the headrest has a religious significance: it is the material double of his owner, just as the favourite ox is the living double. This may shed light on the place and the meaning of the artefact in African cultures. In Ancient Egyptian culture, the headrest became a hieroglyph (Figure 11).



- In addition to Headrests , the dissymmetric horns of oxen and the w3s-sceptre , the Ancient Egyptians shared many features with the cultures of the Nilotic and Cushitic pastoralists, probably as a result of their Saharo-Nubian roots

Saharo-Nubian Cultural Antecedents of the Egyptian Predynastic Culture:

a - In the Gilf Kebir, the rock art can be said to foreshadow the Egyptian myth of the aquatic world of the Afterlife

b- The ceremonial centre and stelae of Nabta Playa document a conception of the Afterlife linked to the key stars of the Egyptian culture: Orion (%3H), Sirius (%pdt), and the Circumpolar stars (ixm-sk; Wb 1, 125.14)

c - We can follow the ‘Giraffe road’ – not the animals, but their pictures engraved and painted on the rocks of the Western Desert and incised or painted on the Naqadan jars of the Nile Valley cultures.

- Recent archaeological data provided since the 1980s outlines a new map of the formation of Ancient Egypt. Tasian (c. 4500 BC) and Badarian Nile Valley sites were not the centres of a Predynastic culture, but peripheral provinces of a network of earlier African cultures around which Badarian, Saharan, Nubian and Nilotic peoples regularly circulated (aka the Saharan-sahel-Nile civilization).
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
^^^ I very much like the concept that the Nile became a zone of linguistic and cultural compression following its desertification .

Which is what those archaeological maps seem to indicate:


 

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Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
a Sample

quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:
While the cats away.....

Ignorance is bliss.

U3 is African
U6 is African
U5 is African
H1 is african
HV is African.

All have highest frequency, age and diversity IN Africa.

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I know about U6 and read about U5 but where is your evidence for U3, H1, and HV?

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quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:

My guess is ...everything started in the Sahara and migrated out...away from the Sahara.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

^^^ I very much like the concept that the Nile became a zone of linguistic and cultural compression following its desertification .

Which is what those archaeological maps seem to indicate:

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quote:

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Originally posted by Son of Ra:

quote:

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Originally posted by the lioness,:
Perhistoric Arabia and the whole Middle East could be called and an extension of Africa but not the historical period when written record begins. By that time the region is semi African and has transformed and also taken in various ethnicities from surrounding regions

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We know that. But what we are doing is questioning how 'Eurasian' is U5 or U6 since they could have arose in African descent people. Like Djehuti(correct me if I misunderstood you Djehuti) pointed out, there were back and forth migrations between Africa and Levant.

I also posted an article by Jeff Rose and in that article southern Arabia was possibly inhabited by African descent people before the supposed OOA migration happened.

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quote:

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Originally posted by the lyinass,:

SOMALIA

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The lyinass posted the above without citing the source or providing an explanation for the above findings, yet according to the chart Sub-Saharan Somalis also have significant 'Eurasian' influence. What that influence is again without any context, I'm guessing it is in maternal lineages since hg R0 ('Arabian'?) is also present in significant frequencies in Somalia since the. Though it could talk about paternal lineages since the 'Eastern Indian' could be in reference to hg T and and Australian to hg K though if that's the case, 'East African' hg E should be around 80%.

And again this 'Eurasian' influence is found as far south as Kenya with mtDNA hg U6 found there. I've said it before, NON of Africa is safe from the Euronuts' white-washing.
 

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Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
 
Diversity and frequency...in that order. Frequency may be a result of genetic drift. So it is taken with a grain of salt.

Of course there is a thing called "undifferentiated". eg U5 in Guinea

quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
The origins of a clade are based on both frequency AND diversity. U in general has it's greatest diversity in Arabia with downstream markers found all around in adjacent areas i.e. Central and Southern Asia and in North Africa and Europe.

quote:

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Originally posted by xyyman:

My guess is ...everything started in the Sahara and migrated out...away from the Sahara.

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That seems to be the case for all non-African humans in general.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Of relevance to the topic of this thread...

African Archaeological Review

John E. Yellen
National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230

Abstract

Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes. They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates. The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African “tradition.” They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Of relevance to the topic of this thread...

African Archaeological Review

John E. Yellen
National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230

Abstract

Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes. They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates. The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African “tradition.” They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries.

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Good find. This shows there was in huge parts of
the continent, a common sub-stratum, or "African tradition"
culturally, as the authors affirm. Full citation:

"Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes. They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates. The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African “tradition.” They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries."
-- John E. Yellen. 1998. Barbed Bone Points: Tradition and Continuity in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa . African Archaeological Review , vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 173-198

----------------------------------------------



Now the above can be added to data from earlier threads- recap:


In 1988 Allison Brooks and John Yellin discovered a bone harpoon point in Katanda, Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Humans in Central Africa used some of the earliest barbed points, like this harpoon point, to spear huge prehistoric catfish weighing as much as 68 kg (150 lb)–enough to feed 80 people for two days. Later, humans used harpoons to hunt large, fast marine mammals" (http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/katanda-bone-harpoon-point, accessed 0510-2010)
-----------------------------------------------------------

The Wadi Kubbaniya Skeleton: A Late Paleolithic Burial from Southern Egypt
Description and comparison of the skeleton

By J. Lawrence Angel and Jennifer Olsen Kelley 1986

QUOTE:

“It is also similar to that of other desert-adapted or even savannah-adapted populations of Upper Paleolithic to modern times in the range from Morrocco and Egypt to the lake country of East Africa.”

“The proper comparisons would be with the hunting and fishing populations between 20,000 and 8,000 B.P., along and between the Nile drainage, from the mountains and forested terrain of Zaire to the savannah lake country. Northwards, toward the Delta (actual Nile Delta sites obviously are very deeply buried) and finally with the chain of North African populations.”

“If we had Upper Paleolithic to early Mesolithic samples from Egypt, Libya and the northern Sahara, we would probably find a smooth transition from the Ishango-Lothagam-Elementeita proto-Nilotics to the Mecha-Afalou proto- Moors and proto-Berbers.”

“The Wadi Kubbaniya skeleton is a link in a chain of hunting and fishing peoples present in Africa, from 20,000 B.P. to 8,000 B.P. They are the direct ancestors of modern Nilotics, Nubians, Egyptians, probably Libyans and Berbers.”
-----------------------------------------------------------




[b]And as the article by deMenocal and Tierney show
the peoples of this culture as it developed not
only hunted/fished/foraged but were also pastoralists.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the African Humid Period is its impact on North African human sustainability and cultural development (Hoelzmann et al., 2002; Kuper and Kröpelin, 2006). North Africa was nearly completely vegetated during the height of the AHP (Jolly et al., 1998) and populated with nomadic hunter-gatherer communities that increasingly practiced pastoralism (husbandry of cattle, sheep, and goats; Hoelzmann et al., 2002; Kuper and Kröpelin, 2006). The rock art images in Figure 1 depict impressions of this life. Towards the end of the African Humid Period between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago the progressive desiccation of the region led to a widespread depopulation and abandonment of North African sites. These populations did not disappear, however. The large-scale exodus was coincident with the rise of sedentary life and pharaonic culture along the Nile River (a perennial water source) and the spread of pastoralism throughout the continent (Kuper and Kröpelin, 2006)."
--(deMenocal, P. B. & Tierney, J. E. (2012) Green
Sahara: African Humid Periods Paced by Earth's
Orbital Changes. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):12)


and

Scholars note movement in the area was much easier south to north from East Africa, the SUdan and the Sahara into the Nile Valley than along the more arduous and resource poor Mediterranean coast. QUOTE:

"Paleoanthropologists tend to regard North Africa as one large geographical zone, thus assuming population affinities between the Maghreb and the Upper Nile Valley, are more likely that between the latter and sub-Saharan Africa. However, a quick glance at the map indicates that the distance between the Maghreb and the Nile Valley is larger than between the Nile Valley and Ethiopia, or Kenya. Moreover, north-south population movements along East Africa and the Nile Valley is more likely than an eastbound migration along the winding southern Mediterranean coast. Plentiful sources of water, availability of game and favorable climatic conditions (i.e. no hot and dry ecological zones) probably spurred population movements along this route. However the size of the Mediterranean coastal belt varied during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Thus during periods of extremely arid conditions, the availability of water and game along the coast was more than likely rather limited. "
-- Pierre M. Vermeersch. 2002. Palaeolithic Quarrying Sites in Upper and Middle Egypt

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tHEN THERE is the pattern of wavy-line pottery seen over a broad area




".. numerous sites of this period, whether fishing settlements or not had one feature in common. From Lake Turkana to Nabta Playa, in Tibestim in the Hoggar, in Niger, whether the first village of Early Khartoum or the seasonally inhabited encampments (which Camps (1974) has grouped together as the 'Saharo-Sudanese Neolithic'), these sites all contained remarkably similar pottery - the earliest to appeat were large round-bottomed vessels made of a coarse fabric, the whole surface covered with decoration before firing and with certain common motifs, notably wavy-line and walking-comb. These forms and decorative styles continued throughout the whole Neolithic in the south Sahara and Sahel- potsof this kind with wavy-line decoration now having been reported as far afield as Mauritania, around 4000bp (Petit Maire 1979)... "
--Thurstan Shaw, ed. 1995. The Archaeology of Africa: Foods, Metals and Towns




More data on the wavy-line pottery complex


The Wavy Line and the Dotted Wavy Line Pottery in the Prehistory of the Central Nile and the Sahara-Sahel Belt

Mohammed-Ali A.S.1; Khabir A-R.M.2 (2003) African Archaeological Review, Volume 20, Number 1, March 2003 , pp. 25-58(34)

"Abstract:

The two type-sites of the Khartoum Mesolithic and Khartoum Neolithic (Khartoum Hospital and Shaheinab), in Central Sudan, were excavated at the end of the 1950s. The ceramics recovered from these sites, characterized by wavy line and dotted wavy line decoration, formed a cornerstone for identifying Mesolithic–Neolithic components along the Central Nile and across the Sahara-Sahel Belt. Moreover, they formed a model for an evolutionary sequence, and suggested a level of cultural uniformity for the Nilo-Sahara-Sahel Belt from the eighth to the fourth millennia BC."

----------------------------------------------------------------------



Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change

Sereno PC, et al. 2008. PLoS ONE (2008)

Bottom Line: Called Gobero, this suite of closely spaced sites chronicles the rapid pace of biosocial change in the southern Sahara in response to severe climatic fluctuation.Two main occupational phases are identified that correspond with humid intervals in the early and mid-Holocene, based on 78 direct AMS radiocarbon dates on human remains, fauna and artifacts, as well as 9 OSL dates on paleodune sand. The older occupants have craniofacial dimensions that demonstrate similarities with mid-Holocene occupants of the southern Sahara and Late Pleistocene to early Holocene inhabitants of the Maghreb.Their hyperflexed burials compose the earliest cemetery in the Sahara dating to approximately 7500 B.C.E.

"Abstract: Approximately two hundred human burials were discovered on the edge of a paleolake in Niger that provide a uniquely preserved record of human occupation in the Sahara during the Holocene ( approximately 8000 B.C.E. to the present). Called Gobero, this suite of closely spaced sites chronicles the rapid pace of biosocial change in the southern Sahara in response to severe climatic fluctuation.Two main occupational phases are identified that correspond with humid intervals in the early and mid-Holocene, based on 78 direct AMS radiocarbon dates on human remains, fauna and artifacts, as well as 9 OSL dates on paleodune sand. The older occupants have craniofacial dimensions that demonstrate similarities with mid-Holocene occupants of the southern Sahara and Late Pleistocene to early Holocene inhabitants of the Maghreb. Their hyperflexed burials compose the earliest cemetery in the Sahara dating to approximately 7500 B.C.E. These early occupants abandon the area under arid conditions and, when humid conditions return approximately 4600 B.C.E., are replaced by a more gracile people with elaborated grave goods including animal bone and ivory ornaments.The principal significance of Gobero lies in its extraordinary human, faunal, and archaeological record, from which we conclude the following: The early Holocene occupants at Gobero (7700-6200 B.C.E.) were largely sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherers with lakeside funerary sites that include the earliest recorded cemetery in the Sahara.Principal components analysis of craniometric variables closely allies the early Holocene occupants at Gobero with a skeletally robust, trans-Saharan assemblage of Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene human populations from the Maghreb and southern Sahara.

Gobero was abandoned during a period of severe aridification possibly as long as one millennium (6200-5200 B.C.E).More gracile humans arrived in the mid-Holocene (5200-2500 B.C.E.) employing a diversified subsistence economy based on clams, fish, and savanna vertebrates as well as some cattle husbandry.Population replacement after a harsh arid hiatus is the most likely explanation for the occupational sequence at Gobero.We are just beginning to understand the anatomical and cultural diversity that existed within the Sahara during the Holocene."
 

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Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
Of relevance to the topic of this thread...

African Archaeological Review

John E. Yellen
National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230

Abstract

Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. **In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes. They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates. The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African “tradition.”** They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries.

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Good stuff!

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quote:

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Accordingly, through limited on number of aDNA samples, there is enough data to suggest and to tally with the historical evidence of the dominance by Nilotic elements during the early state formation in the Nile Valley, and as the states thrived there was a dominance by other elements particularly Nuba/Nubians.

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quote:

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Early Nilo-Saharan Subsistence and Technologies

The evidence for the timing of the emergence of food production is strikingly clear and consistent in the nilo-saharan stratigraphy. For the Proto-nilo-saharan and Proto-sudanic stages, no food production can be reconstructed. The Proto–northern sudanic language, in contrast, contained vocabulary indicative of the raising specifically of cattle, along with lexicon requiring the use of grains as food, but not diagnostic of their having been cultivated. The succeeding stage, Proto-saharo sahelian, added vocabulary of cultivation along with lexicon indicative of more extensive cattle raising and also, for the first time, terminology descriptive of large, complex sedentary homesteads, including granaries and round houses. The still-later period, Proto-sahelian, added further words to the agricultural and cattle herding lexicon, as well as a set of words relating to goats and sheep. Appendix 3 lays out each of these sets of lexical “documents” according to the linguistic stratum to which they can be traced back.36

The linguistically attested steps in the shift of nilo-saharans to a food- producing economy are exactly those of the archaeology of the earliest cattle raisers of the southern eastern sahara between 8500 and the sixth millennium bCE (see chapter 2):

• first, cattle raising and ephemeral settlements already with pottery;
  then, as of the later eighth millennium, larger, more sedentary settlements
  with granaries and round houses and prima facie evidence of possible
  cultivation; and
  finally, sometime after 7000 bCE, the appearance of sheep and goats.

The evidence that the earlier two strata——the Proto-nilo-saharan and Proto-sudanic—— preceding the Proto–northern sudanic era were pre–food producing is not simply negative. Two positive kinds of evidence exist.

First, in Proto–northern sudanic and Proto-saharo-sahelian, every root word diagnostic of food production for which there is a known etymology——and this means the majority of such terms——derives from an earlier root word of originally non-food-producing connotation.37These word histories, in other words, directly reveal the readaption of old vocabulary to describe new knowledge and practice. This pattern continued in the Proto-sahelian language, except for the adoptions at that period of loanwords for sheep and goats from Afrasian languages. The borrowing of these words demonstrates the spread of these animals to nilo-saharans who were already food producers. The chronological placement—that is, the linguistic stratigraphy—of this evidence is in keeping with the archaeology of the southern eastern sahara, which also places the spread of sheep and goats subsequent to the development of cattle raising (and probably cultivation).

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quote:

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Second, the two deep branches of Nilo-Saharan—Koman and Central Sudanic, which diverged before the Proto–Northern Sudanic period in the stratigraphy— each developed its own vocabularies of food production by two processes:

1. deriving their own new food-producing terms out of earlier Nilo-Saharan non-food-production lexicon; and
2. borrowing key food-producing words from descendant languages of proto– Northern Sudanic.

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quote:

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The latter kind of evidence reveals that the Koman and Central Sudanic development of food production rested on the prior creation of this kind of economy by the Northern Sudanians and their descendants.

For the Proto-Sudanic period, preceding the Northern Sudanic era, a small set of data relating to the economy and technology of the Proto-Sudanic period has been given tentative identification. It consists of three verbs, one meaning “to grind (a tool)” and the others “to grind (grain)” and “to heap up (especially grain),” along with a very, very provisionally proposed noun for a jar or pot of some kind. These terms direct our attention to some of the things we might look for in seeking to identify the archaeology of the immediate pre-cattle-raising ancestors of the proto–Northern Sudanians. They may already have been collectors of wild grains or grasses and would already have been making ground stone tools, and they may possibly have been experimenting with pottery making (see appendix 2).38

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quote:

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What have not been properly investigated as yet are the lexicons of fish and fishing in early Nilo-Saharan. The little we can propose as yet about the material culture of the Proto-Sudanic stratum allow the possibility that the Proto-Sudanians were the instigators of the spread of the Aquatic economy of the tenth to eighth millennia across the Sudan belt. In this scenario the Northern Sudanians could be understood as an offshoot of the Proto-Sudanic community that chose an alternative subsistence response to the changing climate of the era—a strategy adapted to the dry eastern Saharan areas away from the more favored river and lake environments where their sister peoples of the Sudanic branch predominated. In this way we could parsimoniously account for the shared pottery traditions and other features common to both the Aquatic peoples and the eastern Saharan cattle raisers.

The ceramic technology of these peoples directs the attention of historians to a very important story for world history—namely, the global primacy of sub-Saharan Africans in the invention of ceramic technology. Pottery making was already a fully established and not at all incipient technology in the archaeology of the southern half of the eastern Sahara by 8500 BCE, as early as the claimed dates for pottery in Japan. But Saharan pottery making was not even the first ceramic technology in Africa. The earliest known pottery in all of human history comes from West Africa, from the modern-day country of Mali, and dates to the centuries 10,000–9500 BCE. The archaeology of the makers of this pottery belongs to the West African Micro-lithic Complex,39 a set of archaeological traditions everywhere associated with peoples speaking languages of a third African family, niger-Congo. For historians the question still to be answered is, did ceramic technology among nilo-saharan speakers in the eastern and other parts of the sahara diffuse to them a thousand or more years later from far-away West Africa, or were these two separate and independent African developments of this key early technology?

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Here's 2 important aspects:

1) The Mali discovery of ancient pottery place West Africa as the earliest ceramic makers in the world. Earlier than Western Asia.

2) The instigator of the ceramic making technology were Niger-Congo speakers from West Africa (Mali) who also carried with them other hallmark of the ancient West African economy like the West African Micro-lithic Complex.

So one possible scenario is that Niger-Congo speakers transmitted their pottery making technology to other populations in the (central) Sahara. Let's recall than the earliest boat (Dafuna boat) was also found in West Africa (Nigeria). The history of Africa is one of constant interactions and interrelations between populations. Even today, African countries are made of many different ethnic groups often from many different language families. Those people interact and influence one another through time.
 

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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 



Using genetic, anthropological, linguistic and historical evidence Dr. Clyde Winters explains that ancient Egypt was a multiethnic society in which each of the 42 sepats or nomes (Egyptian administrative centers) was dominated by a different ethnic group, who probably spoke various Niger-Congo languages. It illustrates that because Egypt was a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society the ancient Egyptian language is related to languages spoken in Black Africa. Egyptian Language: The Mountains of the Moon, Niger-Congo Speakers and the Origin of Egypt illustrates that because of the existence of each sepat originally as an independent state meant that once the sepats were united into Kemit, Egyptian scholars were forced to create a lingua franca to provide the Egyptian people with a single means of communication for governmental, religious, intellectual and commercial purposes. The genetic relationship between ancient Egyptian and Black African languages make it clear that ancient Egypt or Kemit was a Pan-African civilization and that the Egyptian language is a link language used to unite the regional languages formerly spoken in the sepats of ancient Egypt.


You can order the book at:


Kindle Books


CreateSpace e-Store
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Here's below a table about lactase persistence frequencies in various African and world populations.

It's important to make the distinction between the phenotype (having Lactase Persistence (LP) in adulthood) and having the genotype for that trait, since all the responsible or associated genes(alleles) for LP have not been found yet. In fact, a great majority of them have not been found yet(as far as I know, see new studies).

Individuals are classified into 3 types, those with lactase persistence (LP), lactase intermediate persistence (LIP) or lactase non-persistence (LNP).

So, imo, for a population to exhibit a high frequency of LP there must be 2 main prerequisites:

1) Practice of herding, in the past, so access to animal milk
2) A strong positive natural selection element.

So a strong bottleneck effect in the past of a herding population, which led to the selection of people with LP in a way that people without LP couldn't survive or reproduce much, probably led to a high frequency of such trait in a particular population.

It's hard to imagine many situations where it would be the case. We're talking, imo, about major bottleneck events like drought, famine, diseases (due to lack of milk vitamins or, if the LP gene is also responsible for other phenotype trait(s), like protection against some infections diseases for example).

So ultimately, imo, populations with a history of herding have various level of LP depending on degree of adaptive advantage provided by the consumption of milk at a certain point in their past history.

The most common gene associated with LP in European population have been identified (T-13910 ). But there's still many people around the world who doesn't have that gene/allele and still possess the LP trait. 3 new genes associated with LP have been identified by Tishkoff and al in
Africa, that is, C-14010, G-13915 and G-13907. The C-14010 seems to be associated with Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic people. Still many people in Africa, and the rest of the world, don't possess any of the 4 known associated genes mentioned above (more are known now, see new studies). In Africa, populations like Wolof, Yoruba, Igbo(Ibo), Gabon (Bantu), Xhosa have the LP phenotype but not any of the known genes associated with it (genes associated with it in those populations will probably be found soon in the future, if not already).

On the table below, we can see for example the LP frequencies such as:

Gabon Bantu=40%
Nigeria Igbo=18%
Nigeria Yoruba=17%
Senegal Toucouleurs=90%
Senegal Wolof=51%
South Africa Sotho=35%
South Africa Xhosa=18%

In most African populations the allele(s) associated or responsible for their LP is either unknown, C-14010 or one of the other 2 identified alleles associated with LP in Africa. Some new studies can provide updated information not available here (some new alleles associated with LP I've been found in various world populations, for example, outside the scope of this thread. The main focus here is the LP phenotype). One of the important point here is that there's many different alleles for LP in the world, some seems to be more prevalent (and probably originated) in Europe/Middle East, others in Africa, etc.

Here's the table about lactase persistence frequencies in various African and world populations (a very nice compilation of past studies):




From The Evolutionary Role of Human-Specific Genomic Events Yuval Itan (2009)
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Just a small correction (I forgot to include the European T-13910 allele when I rewrote that part).

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
In most African populations the allele(s) associated or responsible for their LP is either unknown, the African C-14010, one of the other 2 identified alleles associated with LP in Africa, or the European T-13910 allele . Some new studies can provide updated information not available here (some new alleles associated with LP I've been found in various world populations, for example, outside the scope of this thread. The main focus here is the LP phenotype).

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quote:

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Saharan rock paintings show bows and arrows, but none are sufficiently well dated to permit unequivocal statements about their introduction into West Africa. Microlithic technology appears in the West African record by 12,000 BP. More significantly, however, is the archaeological culture known as the Ounanian, recorded in modern-day Mali by 9000-10,000 BP (Clark 1980; Raimbeault 1990). Ounanian points look very much like arrow-heads, and it would not be unreasonable to suppose that when bow and arrow hunting began in West Africa it introduced a major technological revolution. Hunters could travel further and shoot animals at greater distances and were probably able to rapidly outcompete the situ gatherers and (perhaps) sprear users.

In a neat case of a match between linguistics, technology, and paleoclimatic evidence, it turns out that there is evidence for the possession of the bow and arrow by Niger-Congo speakers. The evidence is tabulated here because of its importance to the overall argument. Table 3.2 shows evidence for reconstructing "bow" in Niger-Congo.

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quote:

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For whatever reason, West Africa was only populated extremely sparsely until the end of the Pleistocene, some 12,000 years ago (Muzzolini 1993).

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quote:

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One feature of the Niger-Congo region is the virtual absence of residual languages. What languages the MSA hunter-gatherers spoke must remain unknown. Only in Southern Africa, where the expanding Bantu-speakers encountered the Khoesan, does a real mosaic of farmers and hunter-gatherers still exist. But within much of the core Niger-Congo area, only Jalaa in Nigeria and Laal in Chad (see Table 8.1 and Map 8.1) seem to be true remnants of an earlier diversity that must have characterised the continent. These fragments both hint at a more ancient stratum of hunting-gathering populations in West Africa, present at the time of the Niger-Congo expansion but almost completely absorbed by them. Niger-Congo must have expanded and assimilated all the resident groups and must therefore have had highly convincing technological or societal tools to bring this about.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:


This show the peopling of the Sahara during the Holocene period (Green Sahara).

It is from this study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/458.full.pdf

(Reading the part of the study starting with the title: The Peopling of the Sahara During the Holocene is very interesting. I assume people have read it)

The Barbed Points (aqualithic) and Ounanian culture are both ancient indigenous African culture. According to the study, the Aqualithic African culture spread following the expansion of aquatic resources in the Holocene which made the Sahara attractive to populations with existing fishing and riverine hunting skills. The Ounanian culture (Niger-congo speakers) from North West Africa would have spread southward and Eastward following big land animals with their bow and arrow hunting skills.

We already know Ancient Egypt may have been the combination of many ethnic groups distributed along many sepats. The numbering of the sepats starting at one with Nubia in the south. I wonder if the population of Ancient Kemet and Nubia/Kush are not the product further down the line of both those cultures. Ancient Egyptians being closer to Ounanian (Niger-congo speakers) while Kushite closer to Aqualithic (Nilo-saharan) with a lot of mixage involved. Also the Kushite (nilo-saharan) would have been slightly darker in hue than Ancient Egyptians (Niger-congo) in general. Although it must be noted that Ancient Egyptian culture spread from Upper Egypt (south) to Lower Egypt (north). Maybe it's the interaction (admixage) between the descendants of ancestral Ounanians cultures and Aqualithic cultures which laid the foundation of Ancient Kemet which later spreads further north toward Lower Egypt to form the whole Ancient Egyptian territory.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Trollkillah # Ish Gebor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:


This show the peopling of the Sahara during the Holocene period (Green Sahara).

It is from this study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/458.full.pdf

(Reading the part of the study starting with the title: The Peopling of the Sahara During the Holocene is very interesting. I assume people have read it)

The Barbed Points (aqualithic) and Ounanian culture are both ancient indigenous African culture. According to the study, the Aqualithic African culture spread following the expansion of aquatic resources in the Holocene which made the Sahara attractive to populations with existing fishing and riverine hunting skills. The Ounanian culture (Niger-congo speakers) from North West Africa would have spread southward and Eastward following big land animals with their bow and arrow hunting skills.

We already know Ancient Egypt may have been the combination of many ethnic groups distributed along many sepats. The numbering of the sepats starting at one with Nubia in the south. I wonder if the population of Ancient Kemet and Nubia/Kush are not the product further down the line of both those cultures. Ancient Egyptians being closer to Ounanian (Niger-congo speakers) while Kushite closer to Aqualithic (Nilo-saharan) with a lot of mixage involved. Also the Kushite (nilo-saharan) would have been slightly darker in hue than Ancient Egyptians (Niger-congo) in general. Although it must be noted that Ancient Egyptian culture spread from Upper Egypt (south) to Lower Egypt (north). Maybe it's the interaction (admixage) between the descendants of ancestral Ounanians cultures and Aqualithic cultures which laid the foundation of Ancient Kemet which later spreads further north toward Lower Egypt to form the whole Ancient Egyptian territory.

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In addition, I refer to this thread.


Land-Ocean Interactions: Climate Variability off West Africa for the Last 21, 000 yea


http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=008760;p=1#000000

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The research is clear. The Niger-Congo speakers did not originate in the Niger Valley. See more on Niger-Congo origins in my paper:

https://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/3149

.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
It seems to be usually agreed that Niger-Congo speakers (sometime called Niger-Kordofanian) originate from a region around the Nuba Mountains/Kordofan in Sudan in East Africa.

Same thing could be said about the haplogroup E-M2 (E1b1a) one of the haplogroup common in Niger-Congo speakers among other haplogroups.

Taken from this book:

We can read:

quote:

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The first expansion of Niger-Congo peoples appears to have stretched from as far east as the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, where proto-Kordofanian would have been spoken, to as far west as Mali, anciently the territory of the Mande and Atlantic-Congo branches. Just how long ago this period of expansion took place remains unknown.

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quote:

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The ceramic technology of these peoples directs the attention of historians to a very important story for world history—namely, the global primacy of sub-Saharan Africans in the invention of ceramic technology. Pottery making was already a fully established and not at all incipient technology in the archaeology of the southern half of the eastern Sahara by 8500 BCE, as early as the claimed dates for pottery in Japan. But Saharan pottery making was not even the first ceramic technology in Africa. The earliest known pottery in all of human history comes from West Africa, from the modern-day country of Mali, and dates to the centuries 10,000–9500 BCE. The archaeology of the makers of this pottery belongs to the West African Micro-lithic Complex,39 a set of archaeological traditions everywhere associated with peoples speaking languages of a third African family, Niger-Congo. For historians the question still to be answered is, did ceramic technology among nilo-saharan speakers in the eastern and other parts of the sahara diffuse to them a thousand or more years later from far-away West Africa, or were these two separate and independent African developments of this key early technology?

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quote:

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Using the principle of the phylogeographic parsimony, the resolution of the E1b1b trifurcation in favor of a common ancestor of E-M2 and E-M329 strongly supports the hypothesis that haplogroup E1b1 originated in eastern Africa, as previously suggested [10], and that chromosomes E-M2, so frequently observed in sub-Saharan Africa, trace their descent to a common ancestor present in eastern Africa.

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So, as I said a couple of times on this forum, both Niger-Congo speakers and the haplogroup E-M2, common among them, seem to have originated in the same approximate region in (north)Eastern Africa.
 

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Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
 
rameses 3 dna results



quote:
"Using the principle of the phylogeographic parsimony, the resolution of the E1b1b trifurcation in favor of a common ancestor of E-M2 and E-M329 strongly supports the hypothesis that haplogroup E1b1 originated in eastern Africa, as previously suggested [10], and that chromosomes E-M2, so frequently observed in sub-Saharan Africa, trace their descent to a common ancestor present in eastern Africa."
--A New Topology of the Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup E1b1 (E-P2) Revealed through the Use of Newly Characterized Binary Polymorphisms (Trombetta 2011):
 

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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
Blench does not support your contention of a East African origin for Niger-Congo. Blench wrote:

quote:

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The first expansion of Niger-Congo peoples appears to have stretched from as far east as the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, where proto-Kordofanian would have been spoken, to as far west as Mali, anciently the territory of the Mande and Atlantic-Congo branches. Just how long ago this period of expansion took place remains unknown.

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Blench makes it clear that the Kordofanian group lived in Nubia while, as far" west as Mali, anciently the territory of the Mande and Atlantic-Congo branches ". This places the origin of Niger-Congo in West, not East Africa as you claim. Following Welmers, I was the first to discuss a Nubian origin for the Mande speakers. See: Winters, Clyde Ahmad, "The Migration Routes of the Proto-Mande", The Mankind Quarterly 27, no1 (1986a), pages 77-96. In this paper I reconstruct much of the Proto-Mande lexicon.

See more on Niger-Congo origins in my paper:

https://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/3149


I also note the Nubian, East African origin of Mande in my book:




Using genetic, anthropological, linguistic and historical evidence Dr. Clyde Winters explains that ancient Egypt was a multiethnic society in which each of the 42 sepats or nomes (Egyptian administrative centers) was dominated by a different ethnic group, who probably spoke various Niger-Congo languages. It illustrates that because Egypt was a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society the ancient Egyptian language is related to languages spoken in Black Africa. Egyptian Language: The Mountains of the Moon, Niger-Congo Speakers and the Origin of Egypt illustrates that because of the existence of each sepat originally as an independent state meant that once the sepats were united into Kemit, Egyptian scholars were forced to create a lingua franca to provide the Egyptian people with a single means of communication for governmental, religious, intellectual and commercial purposes. The genetic relationship between ancient Egyptian and Black African languages make it clear that ancient Egypt or Kemit was a Pan-African civilization and that the Egyptian language is a link language used to unite the regional languages formerly spoken in the sepats of ancient Egypt.


You can order the book at:


Kindle Books


CreateSpace e-Store: https://www.createspace.com/4224626

In summary, based on the quote you published, Blench provides no support for an East African origin of Niger-Congo speakers.

.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Blench does not support your contention

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Blench does not support your contention

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It's not just my contention unless you think I have anything to do with the book African Languages- An Introduction. But it does make sense since, it also corroborates genetic findings. We almost know for sure E1b1a(E-M2) ancestors were at one point in Eastern Africa considering both their common E-P2 ancestors and/or their common E-M2 ancestors. E-M2(and E-P2 of course, since the P2 mutation is ancestral to M2) is an haplogroup common among Niger-Congo speakers. E-P2 is also common among East African, including Chadic and Cushitic(Somali, Afar, Beja,etc), populations.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Blench does not support your contention

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It's not just my contention unless you think I have anything to do with the book African Languages- An Introduction. But it does make sense since, it also corroborates genetic findings. We almost know for sure E1b1a(E-M2) ancestors were at one point in Eastern Africa considering both their common E-P2 ancestors and/or their common E-M2 ancestors. E-M2(and E-P2 of course, since the P2 mutation is ancestral to M2) is an haplogroup common among Niger-Congo speakers. E-P2 is also common among East African, including Chadic and Cushitic(Somali, Afar, Beja,etc), populations.

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It is your contention because Blench in African Languages- An Introduction does not situate Mande-West Atlantic speakers in Nubia. Blench adds Kordafanian which is spoken in Nuba hills to Niger-Congo group, and claims this group originated in East Africa.

It does make sense based on my research but not that of Blench as you had mistakenly postulated in your earlier post. Give credit where credit is due.

.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
I didn't postulate anything about anybody beside posting quotes from books. I think the quote is from Ehret (in the same book). Anyway, I misunderstood your previous post. But still it allowed me to talk about the origin of both E-P2 and E-M2 carriers (all M2 carriers are P2 carriers). It strongly corroborates that Niger-Congo E-M2 carriers have a large part of their origin in Eastern Africa since both M2 and P2, which is ancestral to M2, have their origin in Eastern Africa.

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quote:

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• pos·tu·late verb
  
  verb: postulate; 3rd person present: postulates; past tense: postulated; past participle: postulated; gerund or present participle: postulating/ˈpäsCHəˌlāt/
  
  1. suggest or assume the existence, fact, or truth of (something) as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or belief. "his theory postulated a rotatory movement for hurricanes"
  synonyms: put forward, suggest, advance, posit, hypothesize, propose; Moreassume, presuppose, presume, take for granted "a theory postulated by a respected scientist"
  

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quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
I didn't postulate anything about anybody beside posting quotes from books. I think the quote is from Ehret (in the same book). Anyway, I misunderstood your previous post. But still it allowed me to talk about the origin of both E-P2 and E-M2 carriers (all M2 carriers are P2 carriers). It strongly corroborates that Niger-Congo E-M2 carriers have a large part of their origin in Eastern Africa since both M2 and P2, which is ancestral to M2, have their origin in Eastern Africa.

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quote:

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If you attempted to publish this alledged support of your theory of an East African origin for Niger-Congo, in a thesis, dissertation or research article, based on Ehret and Blench as your source, the peer reviewer of the article or your advisor will claim you misquoted Ehret and Blench once they read the quote. They might say that M2 and etc, was spread to West Africa by East Africans since Blench and Ehret see a West African origin for Niger-Congo, based on the Guinea yam, oil palm, and other crops. Crops of alledged West African--not East African origin.

I have been an advisor on many Master's thesis and PhD dissertation. I am trying to help you in case you are working on an advanced degree. If your sources are disputed, you may give up writing your Master's thesis or PhD dissertation.

Remember your advisor may not agree with your thesis, but if you can support it with the proper citations and analysis it will pass muster. Most people fail to get past the ABD stage because they lack a firm grounding in the review of literature.

Just because you cite authorities--without proper interpretation of the sources you can have your thesis or disseration rejected repeatedly.Remember, when you write the thesis or disseration you are not attending classes so everything you do and write is solely depended on YOU.

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quote:

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Language phyla do not always form neat, coherent geographical blocs and outlying languages are often important indicators of early dispersals. In the case of Niger-Congo, the main body of languages is in West Africa, but Kordofanian, is in the Nuba Hills in the centre of Sudan (Map 5.1). Is this because the Nuba Hills are the homeland of Niger-Congo and the speakers of West African languages migrated westward, or are the Kordofanian speakers lost West Africans? These questions may eventually be resolved, particularly through the use of ecological reconstructions.

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So again, he mentions Nuba Hills as the possible homeland of Niger-Congo. He calls for other field like ecology to answer that question. Just above I didn't use any ecology but genetic theories and study results, which I think people will agree with me, speak for themselves. So even if Blench and many other linguists don't cite the homeland of Niger-Congo as the **only** possibility. They cite it as one and I can use it. He didn't say Italia or South Africa was a possibility, he said Nuba Hills. Other linguists, as well as yourself, Clyde Winters, as you said in your paper I think, also place the homeland of Niger-Congo(-Kordofanian) in Sudan. For this of course, you also deserve some credit.

Since I'm at it. I want to mention that some linguists and archeologists use this classification of the Niger-Congo(Niger-Kordofanian) family:



Of course, under this classification, the origin of Niger-Congo languages may be in West Africa or at least somewhere between or around Sudan and where they are now. Under this classification, it's the labelled Niger-Kordofanian phyla which has it's origin in Sudan. So we don't really care how the ancient language of Niger-Congo speakers is called. It can be (proto) Niger-Congo, Niger-Kordofanian or even Afro-Egyptian (Negro-Egyptian), the African "supra phylum" of Obenga. I just want to demonstrate (because it is true) that Niger-Congo speakers, and West African populations, where once in Eastern Africa, alongside Nilo-Saharans, Cushitic and Chadic speakers, no matter what their languages was called. This of course helped by the fact that E-P2 and E-M2 are said to have originated somewhere in Eastern Africa.

This is mentioned in the book: Languages of the World: An Introduction (2012) (Cambridge University Press). So the book is recent and from mainstream publisher.

quote:

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The Niger-Congo family is typically divided into three branches: Atlantic-Congo, Kordofanian and Mande. However, this classification is not uncontroversial: Some researches treat Atlantic-Congo and Mande as the same branch and, perhaps confusingly, reserve the term Niger-Congo for this branch, referring to the family as a whole as Niger-Kordofanian.

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Beyond "etymological/phylogenetic questions", this is usually the classification of the Niger-Congo language phylum:


Taken from the same book as above ( Languages of the World: An Introduction (2012)).

To finish off, I want to mention that Blench (as some others) also have the theory that Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speakers may have at one time formed one language which he calls Niger-Saharan. Again in the work called"Archeology, Language and the African Past":

quote:

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A Niger-Saharan macrophylum?

The idea that Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan were related has a long history in African language studies. Westermann (1911) combined Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan into ‘Sudanic’ in his first synthesis of African lexical data. Edgar Gregersen (1972) put forward both morphological and lexical similarities as evidence for a macro-phylum conjoining Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan, for which he proposed the name ‘Kongo- Saharan’. Creissels (1981) listed the many morphological and lexical similarities between Mande and Songhay, which are too striking and numerous to be due to chance convergence or extensive borrowing, and questioned the division between Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Blench (1995a, in press b, d) has presented substantial further lexical and phonological evidence to support this macro-phylum, for which he proposes the name ‘Niger-Saharan’. He suggests that Niger-Congo, rather than being united with Nilo-Saharan at the highest level, is a lower-level branch within Nilo-Saharan – a realignment that recalls Greenberg’s demotion of Bantu in relation to Niger-Congo.

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Of course, I don't know where Blench places the homeland of the Niger-Saharan (he probably doesn't know himself). But again, it doesn't matter. Because linguistically he sees the Niger-Saharan supra phylum, combining Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan, as a possibility. So while he doesn't say anything about the homeland of this new combined language family. I think it fits beautifully in the greater scheme: We know Nilo-Saharan may have their homeland in Eastern Africa(using linguistics). Same thing with Niger-Congo. Combined those 2 theories (and other facts/theories) and you can place the homeland of Niger-Saharan in the same approximate East African location. Niger-Congo or Nilo-Saharan ancestors would have move just to another location within Sudan to create the first division of the Niger-Saharan phylum into two branches, the well known Niger-Congo(Niger-Kordofanian) and Nilo-Saharan sub-families.

This of course, also fits perfectly with the Obenga classification of African languages, which I support. As, with the other African language families (Cushitic, Chadic, Egyptian and now Niger-Saharan) Niger-Saharan would descend from the Afro-Egyptian (Negro-Egyptian) language phylum. And then split into the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo phyla.

Under this Obenga's classification from the book Origine commune de l'égyptien ancien, du copte et des langues négro-africaines modernes – Introduction à la linguistique historique africaine :

A larger version: http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w513/Amunratheultimate/Misc/Table1Negro-EgyptianLanguagesFamilyTreeb-1.jpg

The major theory brought up by Obenga being the existence of a pan-African language phylum he calls Negro-Egyptian (Afro-Egyptian). I think he also places it around the Sudan region.

This theory also goes in line with genetic studies. E-P2(PN2) carriers, thus large part of Niger-Congo and Cushitic/Chadic speakers, are already combined. They form one group called E-P2 who once lived at the same location (they have the same unique ancestor). We don't know the homeland of the upstream A and B haplogroup. But considering that many Nilo-Saharan speakers carry an A haplogroup and that the homeland of their language family is said to be in or around Sudan. Then we can suppose the homeland of their upstream A haplogroup may also be in the same region. The homeland of the Cushitic and Chadic language family is also said to be somewhere in Eastern Africa.

So there we are. We got the possible homeland of the proposed Afro-Egyptian phylum of Obenga. Somewhere in Eastern Africa. Where almost all modern African language phylums, as well as affiliated haplogroups, seem to have originated!
 

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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
^Great analysis. Most population geneticist believe that haplogroups A and B probably also originated in East Africa. This is an interesting view, but given the antiquity of man in South Africa, and the early unity of South African and Grimaldi iconography, art and etc., I really wonder what was going on in Central and Southern Africa between 10kya and 3500kya. We know much about the alledged Bantu migrations, but little else relating to historical and archaeological events that took place in areas outside Saharan, East and West Africa.

My interest are haplogroups N and M,which I believe spread to West and North Africa before the OoA event 60kya; and haplotypes H1 and R1. Presently, I am trying to determine why we fail to find R2 in Africa, when Dravidians only migrated out of Africa 5kya.

Great interpretation of the linguistic data,for further support to the theory you should add the archaeological data supporting a spread of Niger-Congo speakers from East Africa (Nubia) into West Africa.I outline this data in my paper on the spread of the Mande,See: http://olmec98.net/man1.htm

In the best archaeogenetic papers you want to support your theory with skeletal,linguistic and archaeological evidence. Good thread.

Finally, I do not recognize Kordofanian as a Niger-Congo sublanguage. I believe that the Nilo-Saharian languages which we associate with the Aqualithic period are much older than the Niger-Congo group which is related to the Ounanian culture. I believe the Paleo-Black African language would be situated in the Saharan Highlands.

.

.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Just above, I meant downstream, not upstream. I'm talking about the more "recent" A and B haplogroups like A-M13 which could have their origin in the same region. I also heard some study placing the origin of both A and B hg in (north) Eastern Africa, but I'm not sure/remember if they meant basal A and B or more downstream ones. There's most probably studies about it that I didn't read yet.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
The population history of the Nile (late Pleistocene to Dynastic time)

Below a nice recap of various archeological studies about the regional continuity of the Nile populations. It was taken from a study posted below.

quote:

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The population history of the Nile has been of considerable recent interest and focuses on two competing hypotheses. The first suggests that the Egyptian dynasties developed in situ from the earlier Predynastic and Neolithic populations represented at sites such as el-Badari. The second scenario suggests that migration of people from western Asia led to the development of the Egyptian state (Petrie, 1920, 1939; Kantor, 1965). In general, the archaeological evidence suggests that the Egyptian state had an indigenous origin (Hassan, 1988). Two recent studies provide evidence for population dynamics in the Nile Valley throughout the Holocene. Zakrzewski (2007) demonstrates evidence for broad population continuity through time on the basis of craniometric variation, with some level of population movement . Several recent analyses of dental variation come to essentially the same conclusion (Irish, 2005, 2006; Schillaci et al., 2009). Thus, in the most general terms, there is strong evidence for population continuity along the Nile from the late Palaeolithic through the Egyptian Empire. However, the diffusion of agricultural technologies into the Nile from other regions, and the subsequent trade networks of the Egyptian empire, would have undoubtedly brought with it people and genes from other regions to varying extents through time and space.

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Main points:

1 - In general, the archaeological evidence suggests that the Egyptian state had an indigenous origin
2 - Craniometry (and Dental variation) demonstrate broad population continuity through time on the basis of craniometric variation, with some level of population movement
3 - Strong evidence for population continuity along the Nile from the late Palaeolithic through the Egyptian Empire with some level of population movement
4 - Trade networks of the Egyptian empire, would have undoubtedly brought with it people and genes from other regions to varying extents through time and space.

So the main point here for us, is the STRONG evidence for population continuity in the Nile region from the late Pleistocene through the Egyptian Empire.

Taken from this study: Body Size, Skeletal Biomechanics, Mobility and Habitual Activity from the Late Palaeolithic to the Mid-Dynastic Nile Valley. Got it from here: (www.) pave.bioanth.cam.ac.uk/pdfs/033-Stock(2011HBTA)NileBiomechSize.pdf (you need to add the www. to the address, the forum doesn't allow me to post the full address)

The study by itself is also interesting as it analyses the consequences on the body of ancient specimens of the transition in the Nile from different lifestyles (hunting-gathering, pastoral, agriculture, etc).

We can also see it here:


The peopling of the Nile is the product of the populations in the A map, from inner Africa, from the South, which expanded in the Sahara and then went back along the Nile to settle down during the desertification of the Sahara in search of greener pastures.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
To come back to the earlier point just about about the geographical origin of Niger-Congo speakers. Ehret do indeed place the possible origin of the Niger-Congo(Niger-Kordofanian) language somewhere in Eastern Africa/Sudan.


From Reconstructing Ancient Kinship in Africa by Christopher Ehret (Early Human Kinship, Chap 12)

Clearly, he mentions the origin of the modern Niger-Congo family in the Sudan region.

Again this fit perfectly with the genetic evidences too which place the origin of the Y-DNA haplogroup E-P2(PN2) and its daughters E-M2/E-V38, somewhere in Eastern Africa.

E-P2 (and affiliated E-M2, E-V38) is one of the most widepread y-dna haplogroups among Niger-Congo speakers and Africa as a whole (as many Bantu, Cushitic and Chadic speakers are also E-P2 carriers).
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Holocene Climate Variability and Cultural Changes at River Nile and Its Saharan Surroundings by J Yletyinen (2009)

LINK
 

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Posted by Trollkillah # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
Holocene Climate Variability and Cultural Changes at River Nile and Its Saharan Surroundings by J Yletyinen (2009)

LINK

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quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

Of relevance to the topic of this thread...

African Archaeological Review

John E. Yellen
National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230

Abstract

Examination of African barbed bone points recovered from Holocene sites provides a context to interpret three Late Pleistocene occurrences from Katanda and Ishango, Zaire, and White Paintings Shelter, Botswana. In sites dated to ca. 10,000 BP and younger, such artifacts are found widely distributed across the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Nile, and the East African Lakes. They are present in both ceramic and aceramic contexts, sometimes associated with domesticates. The almost-universal presence of fish remains indicates a subsistence adaptation which incorporates a riverine/lacustrine component. Typologically these points exhibit sufficient similarity in form and method of manufacture to be subsumed within a single African “tradition.” They are absent at Fayum, where a distinct Natufian form occurs. Specimens dating to ca. 20,000 BP at Ishango, possibly a similar age at White Paintings Shelter, and up to 90,000 BP at Katanda clearly fall within this same African tradition and thus indicate a very long-term continuity which crosses traditionally conceived sub-Saharan cultural boundaries.

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In regards to my post above, I know Zarahan has pitched in a lot of archaeological data to go with it, now here is some genetic data to go with it.

History in the Interpretation of the Pattern of p49a,f TaqI
RFLP Y-Chromosome Variation in Egypt: A Consideration
of Multiple Lines of Evidence by Keita

Though I know this study was discussed several times before Billy Gambéla put it quite succinctly:
Y-chromosome (IV) E-M2 is diversified with (1.2%)-Lower Egypt, (27.3%) -Upper Egypt. And ( 39.1% ) -in Lower Nubia/Nile Valley.

Y-chromosome (XI) E-M35 is diversified with (11.7%)-Lower Egypt, (28.8%) – Upper Egypt. And (30.4%) in Lower Nubia/Nile Valley.

Y-chromosome (V) E-M78 is diversified with (51.9%)- Lower Egypt, (24.2%) - Upper Egypt. And (17.4%) in Lower Nubia/Nile Valley.

The M2 lineage is mainly found primarily in ‘‘Eastern,’’ ‘‘sub-Saharan,’’ and sub-equatorial African groups, those with the highest frequency of the ‘‘Broad’’ trend physiognomy, but found also in notable frequencies in Nubia and Upper Egypt, as indicated by the

RFLP TaqI 49a, f variant IV (see Lucotte and Mercier, 2003; Al-Zahery et al. 2003 for equivalences of markers), which is affiliated with it.

Results show that out of three Egyptian triad M78, M35 and M2, Y-chromosome

M78 has the Highest frequency in Northern lower Egypt @ 51.9%

M35 has the slight Highest frequency in Southern Upper Egypt @ 28.8%

M2 has the Highest frequency in Northern and Southern Nubia @ 39.1%.

M2 is virtually absent in North Africa’s lower Egypt at 1.2% and grows to a higher frequency traveling south-bound towards Upper Egypt and Nile valley’s Nubia.

The distribution of these markers in other parts of Africa has usually been explained by the ‘‘Bantu migrations,’’ ?

but their presence in the Nile Valley in Non- Bantu speakers cannot be explained in this way...

Their existence is better explained by their being present in populations of the “Early Holocene Sahara”,

who went on to people the Nile Valley in

The mid-,Holocene era (12,000 B.P.) according to Hassan (1988);

This occurred way long before the ‘‘Bantu migrations,’’

which also do not explain the high frequency of M2 in Senegal, since there are “No Bantu speakers there either.”

Unfortunately some Afrocentrics tend to misinterpret the data either genetic or archaeological to suggest the Egyptians or their Nile Valley ancestors were somehow "Bantu". Obviously they were not as these people *pre-date* any Bantu languages, yet the connection lies in a common Holocene Saharan heritage or tradition.
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
The following quotes are from the book: The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology edited by Peter Mitchell, Paul Lane (2013)

Basically, it tells us people now living in West Africa (Akan, Igbo, Yoruba, etc) come from the Sahara during its desertification.

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In West Africa, there is very little evidence for people south of the Sahara prior to the mid-Holocene, and such evidence as does exist is primarily of small scattered groups of mobile hunter-gatherers, some of whom returned frequently, possibly even seasonally, to the same places.

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Davies(1967) and Shaw (1978) both argued that before the desiccation of the Sahara, not only were Saharan inhabitants not compelled to move southward, but it was virtually impossible for them to do so. Postulated barriers to human occupation in southern West Africa include the difficulty of making a living in the dense rainforest prior to the advent of iron tools, and potentially lethal diseases such as malaria, onchocerciasis, and trypanosomiasis, the latter an added problem to herders because it can be devastating to cattle (Smith 1992). Only when climate zones contracted could people, and especially herders, move south.

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The artefacts found at many early sites support a northern origin for SMA people in southern West Africa. Projectile points are often in a 'Saharan Style' with concave or convex bases, and pottery often bears comb and roulette impressions very similar to types known from the Sahara and the Nile Valley as early as the tenth millennium B.P.

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It's written black on white. People in southern West Africa (Yoruba, Igbo, African-Americans, etc) have a northern origin. A green Saharan origins. They brought with them archaeological artefacts from the Green Sahara period including pottery and else.


 

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Posted by beyoku (Member # 14524) on :
 
Dp
 

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Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
 
Another map of the Green Saharan/Wavy-line pottery culture:


From Ancient watercourses and biogeography of the Sahara explain the peopling of the desert (Supporting Figures)
 

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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
Y-chromosome E haplogroups: their distribution and implication to the origin of Afro-Asiatic languages and pastoralism, by Eyoab I Gebremeskel1,2 and Muntaser E Ibrahim1
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v22/n12/full/ejhg201441a.html?WT.ec_id=EJHG-201412

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Abstract
Archeological and paleontological evidences point to East Africa as the likely area of early evolution of modern humans. Genetic studies also indicate that populations from the region often contain, but not exclusively, representatives of the more basal clades of mitochondrial and Y-chromosome phylogenies. Most Y-chromosome haplogroup diversity in Africa, however, is present within macrohaplogroup E that seem to have appeared 21 000–32 000 YBP somewhere between the Red Sea and Lake Chad. The combined analysis of 17 bi-allelic markers in 1214 Y chromosomes together with cultural background of 49 populations displayed in various metrics: network, multidimensional scaling, principal component analysis and neighbor-joining plots, indicate a major contribution of East African populations to the foundation of the macrohaplogroup, suggesting a diversification that predates the appearance of some cultural traits and the subsequent expansion that is more associated with the cultural and linguistic diversity witnessed today. The proto-Afro-Asiatic group carrying the E-P2 mutation may have appeared at this point in time and subsequently gave rise to the different major population groups including current speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages and pastoralist populations.

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The subclades of the network some of which are associated with the practice of pastoralism are most likely to have taken place in the Sahara, among an early population that spoke ancestral language common to both Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic speakers, although it is yet to be determined whether pastoralism was an original culture to Nilo-Saharan speakers, a cultural acquisition or vice versa; and an interesting notion to entertain in the light of the proposition that pastoralism may be quite an antiquated event in human history.17 Pushing the dates of the event associated with the origin and spread of pastoralism to a proposed 12 000–22 000 YBP, as suggested by the network dating, will solve the matter spontaneously as the language differences would not have appeared by then and an original pastoralist ancestral group with a common culture and language50 is a plausible scenario to entertain. Such dates will accommodate both the Semitic/pastoralism-associated expansion and the introduction of Bos taurus to Europe from North East Africa or Middle East.55 The network result put North African populations like the Saharawi, Morocco Berbers and Arabs in a separate cluster. Given the proposed origin of Maghreb ancestors56, 57, 58, 59 in North Africa, our network dating suggested a divergence of North Western African populations from Eastern African as early as 32 000 YBP, which is close to the estimated dates to the origin of E-P2 macrohaplogroup.30, 60 It can be further inferred that the high frequency of E-M81 in North Africa and its association to the Berber-speaking populations25, 30, 32, 60, 61 may have occurred after the splitting of that early group, leading to local differentiation and flow of some markers as far as Southern Europe.30, 60, 62

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