Calling the Historians

[Grant]

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10693.full

Y-chromosomal evidence of a pastoralist migration through Tanzania to southern Africa

"E3b1-M35*(former) was found at relatively high frequencies in southern African click-speaking populations (31% and 11% in the Kxoe and !Kung, respectively) (8). All of these individuals now exhibit the M293 mutation (present study). With the exception of one haplotype found in the Kxoe sample, the southern African M293+ Y-chromosomes all carry the derived M293(DYS389I-10) allele (Fig. 1). Three Sandawe and two Kxoe share an identical M293(DYS389I-10) Y-STR haplotype. Most !Kung individuals have Y-chromosomes that appear to derive from this central haplotype (see Fig. 1). One !Kung individual shares a Y-STR haplotype with Hadza and Datog individuals. These Tanzanian and Khoe-San individuals with identical Y-STR haplotypes across 10 loci are likely to have very recent common ancestry. Using analytical methods developed in Walsh (26), we can estimate the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of two individuals who share identical haplotypes across 10 loci. Assuming an infinite alleles model and an average Y-STR mutation rate from Zhivotovsky et al. (18), the mean TMRCA is 1,800y (95% credible region 40–6,680 y). Assuming a binary stepwise STR model, the mean TMRCA of two identical 10 locus haplotypes is 2,065 y. The median estimate under a binary stepwise model is 1,200 y (95% credible region 40–5,070 y). The mean and median estimates are somewhat different due to the exponential shape of the TMRCA curve"

"Our Y-chromosomal evidence supports a demic diffusion model of pastoralism from eastern to southern Africa ≈2,000 years ago."

This seems to indicate that the Khoe (Khoikhoi, Hottentots) , who were sheep, goat and cattle herders, arrived in southern Africa (not South Africa) about 2000 years ago, and were then driven further south and to the dry margins by the Bantu expansion circa 300-500 AD. Where would these Bushmen have acquired their animals and pastoralist culture? Could they have been headed south to avoid the Nilote/Cushite immigrants coming from further north?

The image of Queen Ati of Punt in Hatshepsut's tomb reliefs has been described both as having "Queen of Puntland syndrome" and as simply having steatopygia, which is typical of the Bushmanoid groups. While this data indicates an origin for the Khoe further south, I have to wonder if the people of Punt, who kept cattle, could have been Bushmanoid. The Eyle seem to be associated with the Wilton culture at Buur Heybe and Buur Hakaba, which could tie Bushmen to the cave paintings in the North.

Note this:

http://archaeology.about.com/od/shthrou ... istory.htm

African Sheep

"Domestic sheep probably entered Africa in several waves through northeastern Africa and the Horn of Africa, the earliest beginning about 7700 BP. Four types of sheep are known in Africa today: thin-tailed with hair, thin-tailed with wool, fat-tailed and fat-rumped. North Africa has a wild form of sheep, the wild Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia), but they don't appear to have been domesticated or made up part of any domesticated variety today.

The earliest evidence of domestic sheep in Africa is from Nabta Playa, beginning about 7700 BP; sheep are illustrated on Early Dynastic and Middle Kingdom murals and they appear in eastern Africa about 4500 BP (see Horsburgh and Rhines).

Considerable recent scholarship has been focused on the history of sheep in southern Africa. Sheep first appear in the archaeological record of southern Africa by ca. 2270 RCYBP, and examples of fat-tailed sheep are found on undated rock art in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Several lineages of domestic sheep are found in modern herds in South Africa today, all sharing a common material ancestry, probably from O. orientalis, and probably represent a single domestication event (see Muguai and Hanotte)."

These dates fit in well with the Khoe migration theory.

Comments? Further data or sources?

[SahanGalbeed]

What are you trying to say my germanic friend ? that we descend from the bushmen ?

[LiquidHYDROGEN]

@Sahal. Somalis are the purest race in the HOA. They, on average, have 60% Nilotic ancestry and 40% eurasian ancestry. The bushmen contribute 0% to Somalis. But I think what grant was getting at was that the Cushites/nilotes may have pushed the khoi south thousands of years ago and the bantu expansion pushed them even further south.

[original dervish]

Agriculture began in Africa.....millennia before Mesopotamia.

[James Dahl]

V32 (most Somali and Borana guys) diverged from this Khoisan branch like 30,000 years ago, Somalis are more closely related to some Serbs and Bosnians (diverged 10,000 years ago) than these guys.

[Grant]

James, agreed. My question, though, was, were the people of Punt Bushmen or Cushite? This data seems to say they could have been Bushmen.

Did Queen Ati have steatopygia or was that "Queen of Puntland syndrome"?

[James Dahl]

Well, several things:

Pwenet was a geographical designation that the Egyptians gave for basically everything east and south of Kush, and did not refer to a specific place.

Ancient Egyptian history was not that long ago really, if the Egyptians sailed to Somalia as is often supposed (but not certain) the people inhabiting Somalia 4000 years ago was basically the same as it is today, minus the Arab and Indian Ocean influences.

The main difference was that Somalia was much wetter 4000 years ago than it is today, the climate of southern Somalia existed then in northern Somalia, which supported cattle grazing (now limited to the south).

The ancestors of Somali people moved into the Horn, probably from the Nile valley area, more than 8000 years ago.

Languages and cultures radically change over the centuries due to conquest or cultural adaptation, but population genetics don't. They dug up a neolithic skeleton in Britain a few years back and found a living relative in a village within a few miles of where he was buried.

[WardenOfTheNorth]

Somalis have around 5% Khoisan blood... I will post my result from one of the calculators which show that.Take in mind I am reer woqooyi asal
puntDNAL K12 Modern Oracle

Admix Results (sorted):

# Population Percent
1 Sub-Saharan 44.94
2 Near_East 23.95
3 Anatolian_NF 16.76
4 South_African_HG 5.69 SAfrican HunterGather aka Khoisan
5 Caucasus_HG 3.81
6 East_Asian 2.92
7 Oceanian 1.76

[Jabuutawi]

Grant wants us to believe as recently as 2,000 years ago the Horn was inhabited by Bushmen. Poppycock.

When did Somalis (75% of them) split from Oromos? 5,000 years ago or even less?

[WardenOfTheNorth]

Grant wants us to believe as recently as 2,000 years ago the Horn was inhabited by Bushmen. Poppycock.

When did Somalis (75% of them) split from Oromos? 5,000 years ago or even less?

Admixed horners arrived by at least 8000 years ago(probably earlier) from Egypt/Levant.Grant doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about

[gurey25]

Grant steatopygia is not a unique bushman phenomena
I've seen 3 examples from my family.
Is that what you are basing your whole theory on?

[James Dahl]

Grant wants us to believe as recently as 2,000 years ago the Horn was inhabited by Bushmen. Poppycock.

When did Somalis (75% of them) split from Oromos? 5,000 years ago or even less?

Not enough data to say definitively, my guess is 2000 years ago, but that's just a guess.

[Grant]

This is from the same link I initially listed:

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/1069 ... nsion.html
Maps of E3b1-M35*(former) (A) and E3b1f-M293 (B) in Africa

Bushmen were the dominant human race for roughly 200,000 years. They covered all of Africa and were definitely present in the Horn. The authors of the initial link I posted posit two populations, E31-M35(former) and E3b1f293. The later include the Khoe, from an area south of Somalia. The former covers Somalia and Africa generally.

Since it is almost certain the Khoi sheep and goats came through the Horn, it seems to me there could easily be a connection to a Bushman group in the North.

Begin reading on page 60:

http://venturepress.dk/wp-content/uploa ... a-1986.pdf

Strategrapohic excavations at depth at rock shelters at Buur Heybe and Buur Hakeba found pottery in the top levels, pointing to a connection to the resident Eyle population, which is thought to have Bushmanoid connections. Note that no bones of domestic animals were found, suggesting a purely hunter/gatherer culture.

So where did the Khoe get their animals and pastoralist culture? If the sheep came through the Horn, might there not have been another pastoralist Bushman group in the North that acted as an intermediary?

[Grant]

Grant wants us to believe as recently as 2,000 years ago the Horn was inhabited by Bushmen. Poppycock.

When did Somalis (75% of them) split from Oromos? 5,000 years ago or even less?

J,

It doesn't make any difference when the proto-Sam arrived. The Bushmen were there. And the 2,000 year date works out pretty well. The Somalis didn't make it to the Red Sea coast until the first century AD. The Yibir controlled large parts of the North until the time of Aw Barkhadle in the 13th century. The Midgan and Madhibaan claim not to have been conquered until the 12th and 13th centuries; so the Somalis did not have a monopoly in Somalia at an early period. The Eyle actually have an oral tradition of successfully fighting off successive waves of Cushitic immigrants, and they appear still to be at their ancestral location.

[Gaashaanle1000]

@Sahal. Somalis are the purest race in the HOA. They, on average, have 60% Nilotic ancestry and 40% eurasian ancestry. The bushmen contribute 0% to Somalis. But I think what grant was getting at was that the Cushites/nilotes may have pushed the khoi south thousands of years ago and the bantu expansion pushed them even further south.

That is a crude estimate by all means.

The East African ancestral component of Somalis is actually not Nilotic and does not currently exist in East Africa. This is known because Nilotic ancestry contains west African affinities which Somalis do not at all.

The only way we can be clear about Somali and other closely related Cushitic ancestry is when we get more ancient genomes from East Africa and the middle East. Personally I think we are predominantly a very ancient aboriginal middle Eastern population with some local admixture from a group that has been completely assimilated into us and no longer exists.