Genome-wide variation in the Angolan Namib Desert reveals unique pre-Bantu ancestry.

Oliveira, Sandra; Fehn, Anne-Maria; Amorim, Beatriz; Stoneking, Mark; Rocha, Jorge (2023). Genome-wide variation in the Angolan Namib Desert reveals unique pre-Bantu ancestry. Science Advances, 9(38), eadh3822. American Association for the Advancement of Science 10.1126/sciadv.adh3822

[img]
Preview
Text
sciadv.adh3822.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial (CC-BY-NC).

Download (1MB) | Preview

Ancient DNA studies reveal the genetic structure of Africa before the expansion of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists; however, the impact of now extinct hunter-gatherer and herder societies on the genetic makeup of present-day African groups remains elusive. Here, we uncover the genetic legacy of pre-Bantu populations from the Angolan Namib Desert, where we located small-scale groups associated with enigmatic forager traditions, as well as the last speakers of the Khoe-Kwadi family's Kwadi branch. By applying an ancestry decomposition approach to genome-wide data from these and other African populations, we reconstructed the fine-scale histories of contact emerging from the migration of Khoe-Kwadi-speaking pastoralists and identified a deeply divergent ancestry, which is exclusively shared between groups from the Angolan Namib and adjacent areas of Namibia. The unique genetic heritage of the Namib peoples shows how modern DNA research targeting understudied regions of high ethnolinguistic diversity can complement ancient DNA studies in probing the deep genetic structure of the African continent.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Population Genetics
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE)

UniBE Contributor:

Da Silva Oliveira, Sandra Raquel

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology

ISSN:

2375-2548

Publisher:

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

25 Sep 2023 14:07

Last Modified:

29 Oct 2023 02:24

Publisher DOI:

10.1126/sciadv.adh3822

PubMed ID:

37738339

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/186526

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/186526

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback