The Dienekes' Anthropology Blog shows a new paper on East African mtDNA with implications for the origin of Afroasiatic, namely with the citing:"making the hypothesis of a Levantine origin of AA unlikely", unfortunately I do not have access to the paper, I would greatly appreciate if anyone has access to it to please send me a copy here: ethiohelix@gmail.com.
Here is the abstract and the link:
mtDNA variation in East Africa unravels the history of afro-asiatic groups
UPDATE: Ok, got it, this was a nice little article to read, however with respect to the implications of East African mtDNA variation on the origin of Afroasiatic, it did not offer nothing really substantially new, in terms of material evidence, that any reasonable person that has read up on this subject a little bit would not have known beforehand, namely:
Concerning the third point, i.e., the place of origin of AA (EA or the Levant), our results do not allow us to make conclusive statements. Indeed, coalescent simulations of different genetic parameters (Supporting Information Fig. 4) according to the two mentioned hypotheses show that—even assuming complete correlation between languages and mtDNA variability—their confidence intervals largely overlap. Thus, we limit ourselves to the following observations. First, EA shows the highest levels of nucleotide diversity among the studied populations with a decreasing cline towards NA and the Levant (Supporting Information Fig. 1 and Supporting Information Table 1). This is true not only for the Ethiopian cluster A, but also, and especially, for groups belonging to clusters B1 and B2. Second, EA hosts the two deepest clades of AA, Omotic and Cushitic. These families are found exclusively in EA, while the presence of Semitic in this area is much more recent. Third, cluster C – collecting Berber- and Semitic-speaking populations from NA and the Levant – shows only modest signals of admixture with clusters A and B (Fig. 2, Supporting Information Table 1). None of these points,
taken by itself, is conclusive, but undoubtedly the hypothesis of origin of AA in EA is the most parsimonious one, if compared to the Levant.
It did also have some very nicely made contour maps for EA, as well as detailed mtDNA haplogroup assignments for some 30 or so East African groups, which I will make an interactive chart for within the next couple of days.
UPDATE2 (01/08/2013): mtDNA haplogroups (46) in 31 groups.
A note on the sources for the samples listed above:
Here is the abstract and the link:
Abstract
East Africa (EA) has witnessed pivotal steps in the history of human evolution. Due to its high environmental and cultural variability, and to the long-term human presence there, the genetic structure of modern EA populations is one of the most complicated puzzles in human diversity worldwide. Similarly, the widespread Afro-Asiatic (AA) linguistic phylum reaches its highest levels of internal differentiation in EA. To disentangle this complex ethno-linguistic pattern, we studied mtDNA variability in 1,671 individuals (452 of which were newly typed) from 30 EA populations and compared our data with those from 40 populations (2970 individuals) from Central and Northern Africa and the Levant, affiliated to the AA phylum. The genetic structure of the studied populations—explored using spatial Principal Component Analysis and Model-based clustering—turned out to be composed of four clusters, each with different geographic distribution and/or linguistic affiliation, and signaling different population events in the history of the region. One cluster is widespread in Ethiopia, where it is associated with different AA-speaking populations, and shows shared ancestry with Semitic-speaking groups from Yemen and Egypt and AA-Chadic-speaking groups from Central Africa. Two clusters included populations from Southern Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Despite high and recent gene-flow (Bantu, Nilo-Saharan pastoralists), one of them is associated with a more ancient AA-Cushitic stratum. Most North-African and Levantine populations (AA-Berber, AA-Semitic) were grouped in a fourth and more differentiated cluster. We therefore conclude that EA genetic variability, although heavily influenced by migration processes, conserves traces of more ancient strata. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
mtDNA variation in East Africa unravels the history of afro-asiatic groups
UPDATE: Ok, got it, this was a nice little article to read, however with respect to the implications of East African mtDNA variation on the origin of Afroasiatic, it did not offer nothing really substantially new, in terms of material evidence, that any reasonable person that has read up on this subject a little bit would not have known beforehand, namely:
Concerning the third point, i.e., the place of origin of AA (EA or the Levant), our results do not allow us to make conclusive statements. Indeed, coalescent simulations of different genetic parameters (Supporting Information Fig. 4) according to the two mentioned hypotheses show that—even assuming complete correlation between languages and mtDNA variability—their confidence intervals largely overlap. Thus, we limit ourselves to the following observations. First, EA shows the highest levels of nucleotide diversity among the studied populations with a decreasing cline towards NA and the Levant (Supporting Information Fig. 1 and Supporting Information Table 1). This is true not only for the Ethiopian cluster A, but also, and especially, for groups belonging to clusters B1 and B2. Second, EA hosts the two deepest clades of AA, Omotic and Cushitic. These families are found exclusively in EA, while the presence of Semitic in this area is much more recent. Third, cluster C – collecting Berber- and Semitic-speaking populations from NA and the Levant – shows only modest signals of admixture with clusters A and B (Fig. 2, Supporting Information Table 1). None of these points,
taken by itself, is conclusive, but undoubtedly the hypothesis of origin of AA in EA is the most parsimonious one, if compared to the Levant.
It did also have some very nicely made contour maps for EA, as well as detailed mtDNA haplogroup assignments for some 30 or so East African groups, which I will make an interactive chart for within the next couple of days.
UPDATE2 (01/08/2013): mtDNA haplogroups (46) in 31 groups.
A note on the sources for the samples listed above:
The Dinka Samples are from Krings etal. (1999)
The Sudan and Ethiopia Samples are from Soares et al. (2011)
The Tigrai, Amhara, Gurage, Oromo and Yemeni1 Samples are from Kivisild et al. (2004)
The Beta Israel Samples are from Beharet al. (2008)
The Ethiopian Jewish Samples are from Non et al. (2011)
The Somali Samples are from Soares et al. (2011) and Watson et al. (1997)
The Daasanach and Nyangatom Samples are from Poloni et al. (2009)
The Turkana2 Samples are from Poloni et al. (2009) and Watson et al. (1997)
The Nairobi Samples are from Brandstatter et al. (2004)
The Kikuyu Samples are from Watson et al. (1997)
The Hutu Samples are from Castrì etal. (2009)
The Iraqw Samples are from Knight etal. (2003)
The Burunge and Turu Samples are from Tishkoff et al. (2007)
The Datoga and Sukuma Samples are from Tishkoff et al. (2007) and Knight etal. (2003)
All the remaining samples: Dawro Konta, Ongota, Hamer, Rendille, Elmolo, Luo, Maasai, Samburu and Turkana are new and sampled along with this study.
