Home | Quotations | Misc Notes | Notes 2 | Hair | DemicDiff |

Egypt in Africa Black-Greek-DNA links | Notes 3 | Notes 4Misc news clips | Ethiopians

Link to research papers and articles: (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita.html) 

Link to current African DNA research: (http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/) 

Google Search- other data
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/peopling-of-the-nile-valley/3q8x30897t2cs/2#

http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.archaeology/2008-07/msg00156.html

Scientific American Magazine - July 7, 2008
The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across
the Continents
DNA furnishes an ever clearer picture of the multimillennial trek from
Africa all the way to the tip of South America

By Gary Stix

A development company controlled by Osama bin Laden’s half brother
revealed last year that it wants to build a bridge that will span the
Bab el Mandeb, the outlet of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. If this
ambitious project is ever realized, the throngs of African pilgrims
who traverse one of the longest bridges in the world on a journey to
Mecca would pass hundreds of feet above the probable route of the most
memorable journey in human history. Fifty or sixty thousand years ago
a small band of Africans—a few hundred or even several thousand—
crossed the strait in tiny boats, never to return.

The reason they left their homeland in eastern Africa is not
completely understood. Perhaps the climate changed, or once abundant
shellfish stocks vanished. But some things are fairly certain. Those
first trekkers out of Africa brought with them the physical and
behavioral traits—the large brains and the capacity for language—that
characterize fully modern humans. From their bivouac on the Asian
continent in what is now Yemen, they set out on a decamillennial
journey that spanned continents and land bridges and reached all the
way to Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom of South America.

Scientists, of course, have gained insight into these wanderings
because of the fossilized bones or spearheads laboriously uncovered
and stored in collections. But ancestral hand-me-downs are often too
scant to provide a complete picture of this remote history. In the
past 20 years population geneticists have begun to fill in gaps in the
paleoanthropological record by fashioning a genetic bread-crumb trail
of the earliest migrations by modern humans.

Almost all our DNA—99.9 percent of the three billion “letters,” or
nucleotides, that make up the human genome—is the same from person to
person. But interwoven in that last 0.1 percent are telltale
differences. A comparison among, say, East Africans and Native
Americans can yield vital clues to human ancestry and to the
inexorable progression of colonizations from continent to continent.
Until recent years, DNA passed down only from fathers to sons or from
mothers to their children has served as the equivalent of fossilized
footprints for geneticists. The newest research lets scientists adjust
their focus, widening the field of view beyond a few isolated
stretches of DNA to inspect hundreds of thousands of nucleotides
scattered throughout the whole genome.

Scanning broadly has produced global migratory maps of unprecedented
resolution, some of which have been published only during recent
months. The research provides an endorsement of modern human origins
in Africa and shows how that continent served as a reservoir of
genetic diversity that trickled out to the rest of the world. A
genetic family tree that begins with the San people of Africa at its
root ends with South American Indians and Pacific Islanders on its
youngest-growing branches.

The study of human genetic variation—a kind of historical Global
Positioning System—goes back to World War I, when two physicians
working in the Greek city of Thessaloníki found that soldiers
garrisoned there had a differing incidence of a given blood group
depending on their nationality. Beginning in the 1950s, Luigi Luca
Cavalli-Sforza started formalizing the study of genetic differences
among populations by examining distinct blood group proteins.
Variations in proteins reflect differences in the genes that encode
them.

Then, in 1987, Rebecca L. Cann and Allan C. Wilson of the University
of California, Berkeley, published a groundbreaking paper based on
analyzing the DNA of mitochondria, the cell’s energy-producing
organelles, which are passed down through the maternal line. They
reported that humans from different populations all descended from a
single female in Africa who lived about 200,000 years ago—a finding
that immediately made headlines trumpeting the discovery of the
“Mitochondrial Eve.” (Despite the Biblical allusion, this Eve was not
the first woman: her lineage, though, is all that has survived.)

All about Eve
The fast, relatively predictable rate of “neutral” mitochondrial
mutations—ones that are neither beneficial nor harmful—lets the
organelles operate as molecular clocks. Counting the differences in
the number of mutations (ticks of the clock) between two groups, or
lineages, allows a researcher to construct a genetic tree that tracks
back to a common ancestor—Mitochondrial Eve or another woman who
founded a new lineage. Comparison of the ages of the lineages from
different regions permits the building of a timeline of human
migrations.

Since 1987 the data bank on human diversity has broadened to encompass
the Y chromosome—the sex chromosome passed down only by males to their
sons. The male-transmitted DNA carries many more nucleotides than
mitochondrial DNA does (tens of millions, as opposed to just 16,000),
enhancing investigators’ ability to distinguish one population from
another. Analyzing mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA from human
populations has turned up hundreds of genetic markers (DNA sites
having identifiable mutations specific to particular lineages).

The route humans took from Africa to the Americas over the course of
tens of thousands of years can now be tracked on the map as if the
travelers were moving, albeit extremely slowly, on a series of
interconnected superhighways. Alphanumeric route signs, such as I-95,
can be recast as alphanumeric genetic markers. In the case of the Y
chromosome, for instance, cross the Bab el Mandeb on highway (genetic
marker) M168, which becomes M89 when heading north through the Arabian
Peninsula. Make a right at M9 and set out toward Mesopotamia and
beyond. Once reaching an area north of the Hindu Kush, turn left onto
M45. In Siberia, go right and follow M242 until it eventually
traverses the land bridge to Alaska. Pick up M3 and proceed to South
America.

Mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome remain powerful analytical
instruments. The National Geographic Society, IBM and the Waitt Family
Foundation have joined in a privately funded $40-million collaboration
through 2010, research that is primarily devoted to using these tools.
With the help of 10 regional academic institutions, the so-called
Genographic Project is gathering DNA from up to 100,000 indigenous
people worldwide. “What we’re focusing on is the details of how people
made the journeys,” says Spencer Wells, who heads the project. In a
recent report its researchers found that the Khoisan people of
southern Africa remained genetically separate from other Africans for
100,000 years. In another study, they demonstrated that some of the
gene pool of Lebanese men can be traced to Christian Crusaders and
Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula.

Power Tools
Genetic researchers have sampled the DNA of many people living along
the migratory routes they have discovered. Yet the seeming certainty
of the data sometimes deceives. Scientists who study human origins
still would prefer a fossil they can hold in their hands over a
genealogical tree. DNA differs from the radioactive isotopes used to
date fossils. The rate of mutation can fluctuate from one stretch of
DNA to another.

But paleoanthropologists are in a fix. Fossil remains are rare and too
often incomplete. The earliest migration from Africa to Australia
shows up in mitochondrial and Y genetic material (thanks to Andaman
Islanders, among others), but the physical artifacts are largely
missing along the route.

The answer to the absence of stones and bones: more DNA, from
wherever. To bolster the case for genetics, researchers have looked to
microbes that have hitched a ride on humans, inspecting their genes to
look for similar patterns of migration. Freeloaders include bacteria,
viruses and even lice. Besides microorganisms, the Human Genome
Project and related efforts to look across the expanse of whole
genomes have yielded a set of power tools that are helping to
compensate for deficiencies in genetic methods. “You can look at so
many different places in the genome from many individuals and in many
populations to achieve more statistical power in testing different
hypotheses,” says Tim Weaver, a professor of anthropology at the
University of California, Davis.

During this decade, researchers have made dramatic discoveries by
simultaneously comparing a multitude of variable, or polymorphic,
sites interspersed throughout the genome’s three billion nucleotides.
The first whole-genome studies earlier in this decade looked at
differences among populations in short repetitive stretches of DNA
known as microsatellites. More recently, the scope afforded by whole-
genome scans has widened further. In February two papers, one in
Science, the other in Nature, reported the largest surveys to date of
human diversity. Both examined more than 500,000 single nucleotide
polymorphisms (SNPs)—swaps of one nucleotide for another at a
particular spot in the DNA—from the Human Genome Diversity Panel.
These cell lines were drawn from about 1,000 individuals from 51
populations worldwide and are maintained by the Center for the Study
of Human Polymorphisms in Paris.

The two research teams analyzed the wealth of data in various ways.
They compared SNPs directly among distinct populations. They also
looked at haplotypes, blocks of DNA containing numerous SNPs that are
inherited intact through many generations. The group that wrote the
Nature paper also explored a new technique for surveying human
variation by comparing repetitions or deletions of DNA stretches of up
to 1,000,000 nucleotides long (copy number variations) throughout a
person’s genome, consistent with the larger trend to mine the genome
for ever more markers of variation. “Any one piece of the genome will
have a history that doesn’t necessarily reflect the ancestry of the
genome as a whole,” says Noah A. Rosenberg of the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor and lead author of the Nature paper. But looking
at many areas at once, he explains, can overcome that problem: “With
thousands of markers, it’s possible to determine the overall story of
human migrations.”

Looking at hundreds of thousands of SNPs allowed the researchers to
resolve the identities of individual populations—and to see how
genetically close relations spread far and wide. Native South American
ancestry was tracked back to Siberians and some other Asians. The Han
people, China’s principle ethnic group, has distinct northern and
southern populations. Bedouins are related to groups from Europe and
Pakistan as well as the Middle East.

The findings, which jibed with previous research from anthropology,
archaeology, linguistics and biology (including previous mitochondrial
and Y DNA studies), also provided a broader statistical foundation for
the out-of-Africa hypothesis, supporting the idea that a small
population of humans moved out of the continent, then grew in size in
a new home until another subgroup of “founders” broke off and moved
away—a process that repeated itself until the entire world was
settled. These wayfarers edged out archaic human populations—Homo
neanderthalensis and Homo erectus—with little or no interbreeding when
they met. The new DNA work indicates that each time a smaller group
split off, it carried only a subset of the genetic diversity
originally present in the African population. So as distance (and
time) removed from Africa lengthens, diversity diminishes, providing a
means to follow population movements. Native Americans, sojourners on
the last major continental migrations, have much less variety in their
genomes than Africans do.

Many scientists believe that the weight of evidence, now backed by
large statistical analyses such as the ones in Science and Nature,
gives the out-of-Africa proponents a clear edge in a long-running
debate over human origins. The multiregional hypothesis—a competitor
to the out-of-Africa one—argues that populations that descended from
archaics, such as H. erectus, evolved over the past 1.8 million years
in Africa, Europe and Asia, and gradually emerged as Homo sapiens.
Occasional interbreeding ensured that the groups did not split off
into separate species.

Few scientists still hold a banner for a strict interpretation of
multiregionalism. But modified versions still circulate, mostly as
attempts to pinpoint whether H. sapiens bear genetic signatures of our
encounters with hominid cousins. Vinayak Eswaran of the Indian
Institute of Technology, aided by Henry C. Harpending and Alan R.
Rogers of the University of Utah, came up with a set of simulations in
recent years that suggest that after humans migrated out of Africa
they interbred extensively with archaic species such as H. erectus.
Eswaran’s model suggests that as much as 80 percent of the modern
human genome may have been subject to the effects of this kind of
interbreeding.

The genetic imprint is not as visible as might be expected if
interbreeding occurred, but Harpending offers an explanation. A set of
beneficial genes carried by African emigrants, perhaps ones that
assisted in childbearing, brought a selective advantage that
eventually blotted out the signature of some archaic genes. “The
result is that the population seems more closely related to the
[African] source population of the favored genes than it really is,”
he says.

Are We Part Neandertal?
Eswaran and Harpending are not the only ones suggesting the
possibility of interspecies trysts. Some fossilized skeletal remains
of H. sapiens have features reminiscent of earlier hominids, and the
genetic record of contemporary humans has also provided fuel for
discussion.

According to the tree diagrams that document genetic lineages, some
gene variants show “deep ancestry”—they are much older than they
should be if humans evolved from a single homogeneous group no more
than 200,000 years ago; a hint of possible interbreeding. In one study
that drew attention in 2006, Bruce T. Lahn of the University of
Chicago and his colleagues reported that a version of the
Microcephalin gene, which is involved in regulating brain size,
contains a haplotype that may have been passed on during an encounter
with Neandertals 40,000 years ago.

A more definitive answer may arrive within the next 12 months. The
Neandertal Genome Project—a collaboration of the Max Planck Institute
for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and 454 Life
Sciences, a Connecticut-based sequencing company—is scheduled by the
end of this year to have finished a rough draft of some 70 percent of
the sequences of DNA from 40,000-year-old Neandertal bones from a
Croatian cave. Its results are expected to be published about six
months later.

So far the project has unearthed no sign of any genetic pattern that
would suggest DNA transfer between the two hominid lineages. “We see
no evidence of that, but we can’t exclude it,” says Svante Pääbo, the
Max Planck professor who heads the project. An earlier publication by
his group that surveyed one million nucleotides, a minuscule fraction
of the whole genome, suggested that some gene exchange might have
occurred, but the result was later found to have been a false signal
because of sample contamination. The researchers have not yet
encountered the Microcephalin variant cited by Lahn.

Handling or even breathing on a sample remains an impediment to
working with ancient DNA: some anthropologists wrap themselves in the
clean-room “bunny suits” used in microchip factories when they head to
the field on a dig. Since that initial paper, Pääbo’s laboratory has
altered the procedures used in the clean room at Max Planck.
Researchers place tags made up of four nucleotides of synthetic DNA at
the beginning of each strand of Neandertal genetic material. Each
strand that exits the sequencing machine goes through a molecular
identity check.

An understanding of the genetic makeup of the closest cousin in the
human line—estimates from previous studies show that the two genomes
are about 99.5 percent alike—could provide the most incisive exercise
to date in comparative genomics, allowing identification of sites in
the human genome where interbreeding took its course and where natural
selection favored certain traits. “I think if you’re interested in
human evolution, Neandertals are the unique thing,” Pääbo says. “They
are our closest relatives. You can access their genomes, even though
it’s technically difficult. But for most other ancestral human groups,
that will not be possible.”

New, still unpublished work reveals that the Neandertal Y chromosome
differs from the human one. “No human man has a Y chromosome like that
of the Neandertal,” Pääbo observes, mirroring earlier results showing
that human and Neandertal mitochondrial DNA also are readily
distinguishable. Last November Pääbo and his team did report one
similarity between the two hominids. Neandertal remains from Spain had
a version of a gene known as FOXP2 that is identical to one in humans
that is involved with the development of speech and language. Again,
speculation emerged in a paper by a separate group in April about
whether the gene could have resulted from interbreeding, although the
possibility of contamination could not be discounted.

How Have We Adapted?
As researchers continue sequencing DNA from shards of old bone to
explore whether humans mated with other species of the genus Homo,
other investigators are applying genome-wide analyses of DNA to see
which genetically controlled traits changed through genetic drift
(random mutations) and natural selection as migrants adapted to their
new homes.

A study published in February in Nature showed the consequences of the
declining genetic diversity as humans left Africa. The project
compared 40,000 SNPs from a group of 20 European-Americans and 15
African-Americans. It found that the European-Americans had a higher
proportion of harmful genetic changes, ones potentially related to
disease, than the African-Americans did, although the authors
refrained from speculation about any specific health effects. The
research shows what lead scientist Carlos D. Bustamante called a
“population genetic echo” of Europe’s founding. The low genetic
diversity of Europe’s small initial population permitted a set of
harmful mutations to disperse widely and new harmful ones to emerge
when the numbers of people began to grow. Natural selection has not
yet had time to remove deleterious changes.

Genome-wide research is also starting to furnish a panoramic picture
of how natural selection helped migrants adapt to new environs. A
spate of studies in the past two years have looked for genetic
alterations that have occurred since humans left Africa or took up
agriculture and that appear to have been useful for surviving in novel
circumstances. Genetic prospectors mined the International HapMap, a
catalogue of haplotypes and the 3.9 million SNPs contained therein
from North Americans with ancestry in northwestern Europe and from
individuals sampled in Nigeria, China and Japan.

One study, co-authored by Harpending, showed that the rate of change
of DNA, and thus the pace of evolution, has accelerated over the past
40,000 years. Another by Pardis C. Sabeti of the Broad Institute in
Cambridge, Mass., and her colleagues indicated that hundreds of
regions of the genome are still undergoing selection, including areas
that govern resistance to disease and the development of skin color,
and hair follicles, which regulate sweat. Such findings imply that
human populations are continuing to adapt to regional differences in
sun exposure, foods and pathogens they encountered when they left
their ancestral African home. And Africans have also evolved as their
environs changed.

One of the most recent studies, led by Lluis Quintana-Murci of the
Pasteur Institute in Paris, showed that 580 genes, including ones that
play a role in diabetes, obesity and hypertension, are undergoing
selection differently among the HapMap populations, perhaps explaining
geographical differences in disease patterns and providing clues to
new targets for developing drugs.

Consideration of the processes underlying human diversity sometimes
moves beyond the dimensions of hair follicles and the ability to
digest milk. Debate over what constitutes race and ethnicity can
quickly enter the picture. What does it mean if a gene variant related
to cognition is found more in Europeans than in Africans? Better
public understanding of genetics—that a single gene does not act like
a light switch that toggles between intelligence and doltishness—may
quell misguided speculations.
Genetic literacy will let a term like “Asian” or “Chinese” be replaced
by more subtle classifications based on the differences in ancestral
genetic makeup found in recent genome-wide scans, such as the
distinction between China’s southern and northern Han groups. “There
is no race,” Quintana-Murci says. “What we see [from the standpoint of
genetics] is geographical gradients. There are no sharp differences
between Europeans and Asians. From Ireland to Japan, there is no sharp
boundary where something has changed completely.”

The journey through evolutionary history set in place by comparative
genomics is still starting. In the meantime, the hunger for more data
and more powerful computers and algorithms knows no limits. Amassing
larger databases—an international consortium announced in January its
intention to sequence 1,000 genomes from various regional populations—
will let researchers run ever more realistic simulations of
alternative models of human evolution and weigh the probabilities of
each one, yielding the best picture yet of who we are and where we
came from.

Note: This story was originally published with the title, "Traces of a
Distant Past".
---------------------------------------------

Gene studies confirm "out of Africa" theories

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, Reuters
1 hour ago

WASHINGTON -- Two big genetic studies confirm theories that modern humans
evolved in Africa and then migrated through Europe and Asia to reach the
Pacific and Americas.

The two studies also show that Africans have the most diverse DNA, and
the fewest potentially harmful genetic mutations.

One of the studies shows European-Americans have more small mutations,
while the others show Native Americans, Polynesians and others who
populated Australia and Oceania have more big genetic changes.

The studies, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, paint a
picture of a population of humans migrating off the African continent,
and then shrinking at some point because of unknown adversity.

Later populations grew and spread from this smaller genetic pool of
founder ancestors -- a phenomenon known as a bottleneck.

Populations that remained in Africa kept their genetic diversity --
something seen in many other studies.

"The one thing that I think we cannot say from this study is that any
one person's genome is any healthier or evolutionarily fit than another
person's genome," said Carlos Bustamante of Cornell University in New
York, who worked on one study.

"You have to think of this at the population level," Bustamante said in
a telephone interview.

Bustamante's team has been looking at the DNA sequences of 15
African-Americans and 20 European-Americans, examining tiny one-letter
changes in the DNA code called single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs
(pronounced "snips").

FIT OR EXTINCT

They tested these changes to qualify them as benign, or potentially
affecting genes, amino acids and eventually proteins in a way that could
damage health or make people less "fit" -- in evolutionary terms, less
likely to survive and reproduce.

"Like every other study ... the African-American panel as a whole showed
more variation than the European-American panel," Bustamante said.

Then his team did a computer simulation of a bottleneck, and found it
predicted this pattern.

Bustamante said it is possible some of the SNPs are beneficial, and he
said his team and others should compare the genetic changes they found
to known genetic changes linked with diseases.

"I wish we had done that (already)," he admitted.

In the other study, Noah Rosenberg and colleagues at the University of
Michigan and the National Institute on Aging analyzed DNA from 485
people around the world.

They looked for three types of genetic variation, including SNPs and
larger changes that involve duplications, deletions and repetitions of
large segments of DNA.

The patterns they found produced what they call the highest-resolution
map yet of human genetic variation.

They also reinforce the idea that humans originated in Africa, then
spread into the Middle East, followed by Europe and Asia, the Pacific
Islands and finally to the Americas.

"Diversity has been eroded through the migration process," Rosenberg
said in a statement.

People of African descent are the most genetically diverse, followed by
people from the Middle East, and then Asians and Europeans. Native
Americans resemble one another the most on a DNA level.

The study also found it is sometimes possible to trace a person's
ancestry to a small group within a geographic region.
=================

Mitochondrial DNA structure in the Arabian Peninsula

Background
Two potential migratory routes followed by modern humans to colonize Eurasia from Africa have been proposed. These are the two natural passageways that connect both continents: the northern route through the Sinai Peninsula and the southern route across the Bab al Mandab strait. Recent archaeological and genetic evidence have favored a unique southern coastal route. 
Under this scenario, the study of the population genetic structure of the Arabian Peninsula, the first step out of Africa, to search for primary genetic links between Africa and Eurasia, is crucial. The haploid and maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) molecule has been the most used genetic marker to identify and to relate lineages with clear geographic origins, as the African Ls and the Eurasian M and N that have a common root with the Africans L3.

Results
To assess the role of the Arabian Peninsula in the southern route, we genetically analyzed 553 Saudi Arabs using partial (546) and complete mtDNA (7) sequencing, and compared the lineages obtained with those present in Africa, the Near East, central, east and southeast Asia and Australasia. The results showed that the Arabian Peninsula has received substantial gene flow from Africa (20%), detected by the presence of L, M1 and U6 lineages; that an 18% of the Arabian Peninsula lineages have a clear eastern provenance, mainly represented by U lineages; but also by Indian M lineages and rare M links with Central Asia, Indonesia and even Australia. However, the bulk (62%) of the Arabian lineages has a Northern source.

Conclusion
Although there is evidence of Neolithic and more recent expansions in the Arabian Peninsula, mainly detected by (preHV)1 and J1b lineages, the lack of primitive autochthonous M and N sequences, suggests that this area has been more a receptor of human migrations, including historic ones, from Africa, India, Indonesia and even Australia, than a demographic expansion center along the proposed southern coastal route.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Early southern predynastic Egyptian crania show tropical African affinities - S.O.Y. Keita
Journal of Human Evolution, 2000 Sep; 39(3): 269-88.


A phenetic craniometric analysis of early farmers from the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt was undertaken in order to explore this hypothesis. Badarian crania were studied with European and African series, using Generalized distances and cluster analyses (neighbour joining and UPGMA algorithms). Greater affinity is found with the African series.
- Soy Keita, A.J. Boyce.

The equally Negro features of the protodynastic face of Tera Neter and those of the the first king to unify the valley, also prove that this is the only valid hypothesis. - Prof. William Petrie, The making of Egypt.

The Anu- first rulers of Kemet.

These... were long-headed-dolicocephalic is the learned term-and below even medium stature, but Negroid features are often to be observed. Whatever may be said of the northerners, it is safe to describe the dwellers in Upper Egypt as of essentially African stock, - Sir Alan Gardiner.

comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 101, Issue 2, October 1996, Pages: 237-246

At Tushka in Nubia, the horn cores of cows were placed in burials as early as 10,000 BC, suggesting their afterlife beliefs. - The Origins of Egyptian Religion
by Taylor Ray Ellison

Late Pleistocene/Holocene Tushka ( Sudanese Nubia) is 'Negroid'
COLIN P. GROVES AND ALAN THORNE 1999
The Terminal Pleistocene and
Early Holocene Populations of Northern Africa.

The oldest remains of Homo sapiens sapiens found in East Africa were associated with an industry having similarities with the Capsian. It has been called Upper Kenyan Capsian, although its derivation from the North African Capsian is far from certain. At Gamble's Cave in Kenya, five human skeletons were associated with a late phase of the industry, Upper Kenya Capsian C, which contains pottery. A similar associationis presumed for a skeleton found at Olduvai, which resembles those from Gamble's Cave. The skeletons are of very tall people. They had long, narrow heads, and relatively long, narrow faces. The nose was of medium width; and prognathism, when present, was restricted to the alveolar, or tooth-bearing, region......all their features can be found in several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the populations of Europe and western Asia. -Hiernaux The People of Africa.

"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 equivalecies of markers), which is affiliated with it. 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 in part went on to people the Nile Valley in the mid-Holocene, according to Hassan (1988); this occured long before the "Bantu migrations", which also do not exlain the high frequency of M2 in Senegal, since there are no Bantu speakers there either".
S.O.Y. Keita
American Journal of Human Biology
16:679-689 (2004)


Black African Hunter 5'5" in height, 6000 BC

The people of the Sahara apparently influenced the cultures of both the Nile valley and of West Africa. The domestication of the local wild Bos africanus cattle probably also originated in the Sahara, in the fourth millennium.


The pictures provide the most complete record of a prehistoric African culture.


An Italian team of archaeologists first explored the Libyan Sahara almost fifty years ago. In 1958 they struck gold. Professor Fabrizio Mori discovered the Black mummy [5,000 bc] at the Uan Muhuggiag rockshelter
- world fact book, http://www.fulcrumtv.com/blackmummy.htm

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

 



 

Home | Quotations | Misc Notes | Hair | DemicDiff |

Link to research papers and articles: (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita.html) 

Link to current African DNA research: (http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/) 

Google Search- other data
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/peopling-of-the-nile-valley/3q8x30897t2cs/2#

1