Ancient DNA reveals 'into Africa' migration

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

Ancient DNA reveals 'into Africa' migration

By Rebecca Morelle
Science Correspondent, BBC News

8 October 2015 Science & Environment

An ancient African genome has been sequenced for the first time.

Researchers extracted DNA from a 4,500-year-old skull that was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia.

A comparison with genetic material from today's Africans reveals how our ancient ancestors mixed and moved around the continents.

The findings, published in the journal Science, suggests that about 3,000 years ago there was a huge wave of migration from Eurasia into Africa.

This has left a genetic legacy, and the scientists believe up to 25% of the DNA of modern Africans can be traced back to this event.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34479905

[merrily]

1. Hasn't Egypt been a crossroads for thousands of years?

I think people always traveled, even by foot and caravan, and certainly once ships were available. They found places in which they were interested and settled down or were driven elsewhere by food shortages, perceived threats to their existence, real or not, etc. Maybe that is a naive view?

[Warpy]

7. Yes, trade routes all over the place were well established by the early Bronze Age

and quite possibly long before then. If you had a surplus of something you couldn't eat, like, say frankincense, you packed it up a few times a year and trekked it into an agricultural region and swapped it for foodstuffs, some of those brought in from far away where olives grew well but grains didn't. People tended to pick up marital partners en route and sometimes stayed at the terminus when they were tired of the road.

One common denominator among our species is our itchy feet. While some families can trace their ancestry in a particular region back a thousand years, even they produced people who took to the road or sea, settling far, far away.

A grand aunt traced the Irish end of my family back through several generations through the flyleaves of old bibles. One phrase is repeated over and over again, "went to sea, never returned." It's a horrible thought, but I've probably got extended family over the whole planet by now.

[LiberalArkie]

2. I always thought that humans migrated from Africa to Eurasia. Interesting.

[Boomer]

3. You're mixing up your timelines

The original migration out of Africa took place 60,000 years ago.

The OP is describing a migration from Eurasia into Africa only 3,000 years ago. It's a movement of people back into the area they left tens of thousands of years earlier.

[MisterP]

4. the past isn't the old Victorian view of "mass migrations" but constant gushing and backwashing

probably since Australopithecus reached the proto-Red Sea


just look at that hot mess--and that's just the father/son transmission for 30,000 years: the women's mtDNA doesn't line up, so the whole idea of race is dead, ya hear me! DEAD!

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Yes, thank you. And there's always mingling with resident populations, so ...

genomes get all mixed up, and don't match categories based on superficial physical characteristics much at all.

[Igel]

5. MIght help explain Semitic languages (inc. Berber) in N. Africa.

Wonder if the geography and timeline work out.

[Warpy]

8. Somewhere in the back of my head is a snatch of memory about a civilization collapse at about that

time involving raiders described as "the sea people" that flattened civilizations across Eurasia and that the Egyptians barely survived. That they were able to maintain a semblance of civilization must have attracted refugees from across the region. That they had barely survived meant the refugees had to keep on moving south once they'd gotten there. Fortunately, game was plentiful around the southern Nile and they survived.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. What popped into my mind was the Lemba

A Bantu group in southern Africa who have demonstrable Jewish ancestry.