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There have been several threads discussing the provenance of Nazlet Khater Man (35,000-33,000 ya) including a recent reconstruction of his skull here, but there aren't that many studies on the younger Wadi Kubbaniya Man (21,000-19,000 ya). The first initial study done on the skeleton was by Lawrence Angel et al. (1986) "Description and Comparison of the Skeleton". The Wadi Kubbaniya Skeleton: A Late Paleolithic Burial from Southern Egypt, whose excerpts I have here. These were some pics I took some years back so bear with me.
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Interesting that Angel proposes that the Wadi Kubbaniya skeleton represents a population ancestral to both Upper Nile and assorted North African populations (including Egyptians and Amazigh). Such a position may not seem so tenable now, but this specimen would benefit from further examination without a doubt.
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^ It was I. Sorry for the shoddy job, but I was back in my alma mater for some personal business and was in kind of a rush when I stopped by the campus library and took these on my phone.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Interesting that Angel proposes that the Wadi Kubbaniya skeleton represents a population ancestral to both Upper Nile and assorted North African populations (including Egyptians and Amazigh). Such a position may not seem so tenable now, but this specimen would benefit from further examination without a doubt.
Yes, you have to remember that this was back in the late 80s before all the data we have now in regards to paleolithic crania.
One thing that's striking is WK's similarity to Nazlet Khater in regards to these features here.
This reminds me of the 1990 study on Nazlet Khater by Bräuer & Rimbach that I cited here.
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The skulls they often compare with in these studies are large collections of Western Europeans Americans and African Americans like the collections Mildred Trotter used. Often they don't have large collections of skulls of say Arabs, Southern Europeans, Central Americans, many many groups in different places in the world. For instance suppose we are looking at a skull of a modern Mexican. I am not confident they could even tell that skull was from the Americas with no other information about it. I am not confident their "Negroid" "Caucasoid" "Asian" and "Australoid" categories suffice beyond rudimentary classification, vague in many cases.
Also forensic criminal investigators make estimates biased (righty for their purposes) toward the demographics that they are investigating in. So if they are trying to identify a skeleton in in an American city they can assume probability based on the demographics of where they are. but these methodologies cross over into forensic anthropology and that same bias may distort a analysis of a skull from some other place in the world, where they might not have large skull collection of the region for comparison or neighboring regions
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^ The purpose of the comparisons is to note similarities. An ideal comparison would be to populations who live in adjacent regions if not from contemporary periods. The forehead and upper-face of Wadi Kubbaniya is similar to the Předmostí skull of modern Czech Republic (26,000-24,000 BP) which is close to WK's time. WK's lower face i.e. lower nose, alveolar projection and receded chin resembles the modern 'U.S. Black' etc. This particular suite of features is also found in the earlier Nazlet Khater as explained in the Bräuer & Rimbach study. In other words both NK and WK preserve features called 'Generalized Modern' associated with OOA which Eurasians and Africans retain only aspects of. Again, a primary reason why racial typology does not work especially the further one goes back in time.
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^ Yes, there is a resemblance between NK Man and WK Man which may suggest population continuity on some level. Although NK Man does display many 'generalized modern' features that align him with other contemporary fossils in Eurasia especially in his forehead and upper face, his lower face aligns him with modern Sub-Saharans especially his mandibular morphology which puts him squarely with Sub-Saharans as shown in the 2002 Vermeersch mandibular metric study. As far as I'm aware there are no such studies on Wadi Kubbaniya man yet, but WK man's mandible especially in ramus shape also appears Sub-Saharan in affinity. In fact many anthropologists consider Wadi Kubbaniya to be a link between Nazlet Khater and the Mesolithic Nubians (Wadi Halfa & Jebel Sahaba).
Wadi Halfa
Jebel Sahaba
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^ Yes we know this! As I stated when I first posted the paper, it was part of the initial study on WK published in 1986 so of course some of the claims made is outdated.
The features that the authors call "Metchtoid" is more accurately called 'generalized modern'.
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skull of individual from 13,400-year-old Jebel Sahaba cemetery (Mesolithic Nubia)
Strangley, Vermeersch's 2002 mandibular metric study shows Mesolithic Nubians like Wadi Halfa to have greater affinity with Neolithic and later North Africans than with Nazlet Khater who is closer to Sub-Saharans further south.
Indeed the male Wadi Halfa sample is closer to the male Taforalt sample than to Nazlet Khater.
Lateral views of three Late Pleistocene male crania showing alveolar prognathism in Jebel Sahaba 117-10 (top), but not in Taforalt XI-C1 (middle) or Afalou 3 (bottom).
^ The above photo comes from the 1999 Joel Irish study on the Iberomaursian Ancestors. And we all know that Taforalt is autosomally grouped with Horn Africans and is intermediate with them and Yemenis the latter who are in turn intermediate with North Africans.
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Do you think the population that Wadi Kubbaniya represents might be ancestral or related to the first Nilo-Saharan speakers? Their physical traits do seem similar to those of modern South Sudanese Nilotic peoples.
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^ Yours is somewhat of a loaded question since Nilo-Saharan is a language phylum that consists of diverse populations. I recall that the Dinka for example in the Loosdrecht autosomal PCA cluster near West Africans but others like the Toubou/Daza of Chad cluster closer to East Africans (according to the 2015 Triska & Soares et ales. study).
Because Wadi Kubbaniya Man is completely fossilized I don't think there is any DNA left to sample. As for the more recent Mesolithic remains of Wadi Halfa and Jebel Sahaba, which are likely to show immediate relations, I don't know of any DNA samples analyzed yet. The 2000 Irish odontic non-metric study does show them to fall into the broad field of Sub-Saharan morphology yet are considered an outlier due to archaic traits like very large crown sizes. So if the Mesolithic Nubians are ancestral to modern Nilo-Saharans they are somewhat distant ancestors.
Since we have no DNA I am interested on the works done on mandibular morphology as well. As you see in the Vermeersch graph the Mesolithic Nubians are closer to North Africans than Nazlet Khater. Too bad the WK fossil wasn't included in the study. But remember what Vermeersch said: 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.
Apparently even Vermeersch considers his "Negroid" grouping to be broad if it includes all those groups listed.
As for his Northwest African grouping (Taforalt & Ibero-Maurusian) I can't help but notice that many Egyptians from later periods also resemble them in mandibular features.
Afalou 34
late Old Kingdom official Shepespuptah Idu
Perhaps this is just more proof of differences between Mehu (Lower) and Shemau (Upper) Egyptians, and that both types (N Africans & S-Saharans) met and mingled in the Nile Valley(?).
By the way, here are some PCA results on Iberomaurusian samples that were ran some years ago: the Iberomaurusians
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Perhaps this is just more proof of differences between Mehu (Lower) and Shemau (Upper) Egyptians, and that both types (N Africans & S-Saharans) met and mingled in the Nile Valley(?).
Looking at Vermeersch's graph, the Badarian sample from predynastic Upper Egypt is barely above the fainted dotted line that separates the North and sub-Saharan African-related samples. So it could be that Upper Egyptians of that period were to some degree mixed between those two types you mentioned (or at least had a bit more sub-Saharan ancestry than did the northerners). What do you think?
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^ Remember we are dealing with metric traits which are more specious than nonmetric traits, not to mention that these are metric traits of one bone--the mandible. Thus, I personally wouldn't look at it as "admixture" so much as natural variation throughout the African continent. Remember that when it comes to metrics of the facial bones and especially nonmetrics both cranially and dentally Badarians fall squarely in the North African category. Note that in Vermeersch's graph the Epipaleolithic/Neolithic Levantine samples also fall right on the dividing line while the Shanidar Cave sample of Neolithic Iran are well below the line in the Sub-Saharan category! These are the same Iranian Neolithic remains that show signs of HBS (sickle cell).
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Remember we are dealing with metric traits which are more specious than nonmetric traits, not to mention that these are metric traits of one bone--the mandible. Thus, I personally wouldn't look at it as "admixture" so much as natural variation throughout the African continent. Remember that when it comes to metrics of the facial bones and especially nonmetrics both cranially and dentally Badarians fall squarely in the North African category. Note that in Vermeersch's graph the Epipaleolithic/Neolithic Levantine samples also fall right on the dividing line while the Shanidar Cave sample of Neolithic Iran are well below the line in the Sub-Saharan category! These are the same Iranian Neolithic remains that show signs of HBS (sickle cell).
Fair enough, but I never knew the Iranian Neolithic remains showed evidence of African HBS. Think it might have been transmitted to their ancestors via Basal Eurasian?
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^ Yeah, I read it from a paper on the paleopathology of the Iranian Neolithic remains a couple years ago but I can't find the paper at the moment. I think Swenet might have mentioned something about it either in this forum or in his blog. Mind you the only form of HBS endemic outside of Africa is the Arab-Indian type that commonly occurs in Arabia especially in the eastern parts around the Persian Gulf, around parts of Iran all the way to western India. If this isn't a sign of ancient African ancestry, then I don't know how else to explain it since all other forms of HBS are endemic to the African continent. It's like for example in regards to linguistics the Semitic family which is itself the only branch of Afroasiatic that developed outside of Africa. As to whether the Arab-Indian HBS was brought by Basal Eurasians, I don't know. The Neolithic Iranian sample yielded high levels of BE but there are many who carry Arab-Indian HBS and don't carry BE as far as I'm aware.
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