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Guide to Patagonia's Monsters & Mysterious beings

I have written a book on this intriguing subject which has just been published.
In this blog I will post excerpts and other interesting texts on this fascinating subject.

Austin Whittall


Saturday, October 10, 2015

Into Africa gaining strength


A paper pubished in Science (Gallego Llorente et al., 2015. Ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture throughout the African continent, Science DOI: 10.1126/science.aad2879 two days ago, reveals what has been suspected for some time: All Africans have a Eurasian component in their genes.


The abstract says so clearly:


Characterizing genetic diversity in Africa is a crucial step for most analyses reconstructing the evolutionary history of anatomically modern humans. However, historic migrations from Eurasia into Africa have affected many contemporary populations, confounding inferences. Here, we present a 12.5x coverage ancient genome of an Ethiopian male (‘Mota’) who lived approximately 4,500 years ago. We use this genome to demonstrate that the Eurasian backflow into Africa came from a population closely related to Early Neolithic farmers, who had colonized Europe 4,000 years earlier. The extent of this backflow was much greater than previously reported, reaching all the way to Central, West and Southern Africa, affecting even populations such as Yoruba and Mbuti, previously thought to be relatively unadmixed, who harbor 6-7% Eurasian ancestry.


As it is behind a pay wall, I checked the web and found the following additional data:

  • "the scientists believe up to 25% of the DNA of modern Africans can be traced back to this event."
  • "... if you go to the corners of Africa, all the way to West Africa or South Africa, even populations that we really thought were purely African have 5-6% of their genome that dates back to these western Eurasian farmers."
  • "...it is also interesting to discover now that even sub-Saharan Africans have a bit (0.3-0.7%) of Neanderthal ancestry."

Who knows, perhaps this is the first step into a serious analysis of the real roots of mankind, and may lead to a revision of the conclusions of another recent paper (L. Pagani, 2015, Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians Cell):


"... the Ethiopian and Egyptian genomes showed different patterns. In particular, the Egyptian0 genomes displayed a more recent split from both the West African (21,000 years ago) and the non-African (55,000 years ago) genomes than did the Ethiopian genomes (37,000 and 65,000 years ago, respectively). This suggests a higher similarity between non-African and Egyptian components than between non-African and Ethiopian components, which is consistent with the fact that Egypt is the last stop on the way out of Africa. Such split dates also hint at a recent interaction between Egyptians and West Africans..."


They too noticed a similarity between Egyptian and Eurasian genes, but their conclusions are different.



Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

3 comments:

  1. I share below an e-mail I received, which is very interesting:

    Dear Mr. Whittall:

    Concerning your article „Into Africa gaining strength“ from October 10th,
    I would like to offer a possible explanation for a European migration into
    Africa: The Sea Peoples. Hittite, Ugaritian, and Egyptian sources tell
    about invaders from the North and Northwest, whose ethnicity is still not
    entirely certain.

    F.C. Woudhuizen, in his 2006 dissertation, assumes that the Ekwesh, Denyen
    and Peleset came from Asia Minor and Greece and the Teresh and
    Tjeker/Teukroi from the Troas region (Woudhuizen 2006: 117-118). The
    Sherden’s original home is supposed to be Sardinia (Woudhuizen 2006: 118),
    whereas the Weshes are said to be Italian descendants of the Urnfield
    culture (Woudhuizen 2006: 119).
    Shelley Wachsmann, however, assumes a component in the Sea Peoples coming
    directly from the Urnfield culture (Wachsmann 2000: 123-130).

    The latest dissertation, Peczynski (2009), sums up: „The debate has
    settled somewhat and scholars agree that the Sea Peoples hailed from Asia
    Minor, the Aegean, the Balkans, and Cyprus” (Peczynski 2009: 39).

    The abovementioned theories coincide with a statement made by
    Callego-Lloriente et alli: „In this analysis, contemporary Sardinians and
    the early Neolithic LBK (Stuttgart) genome stand out (Fig. 2A).“

    The main source for the end of the Sea Peoples’ migration, the Papyrus
    Harris I, contains a claim made by Ramses IV. that his predecessor, Ramses
    III., not only presided over a victory over the Sea Peoples but also made
    them Egyptian subjects (Peczynski 2009: 24. Papyrus Harris I). It is
    unclear, however, where the surviving participants of the invasion were
    settled. Sherden are mentioned as settlers in Middle Egypt (Peczynski 2009:
    25). The Philistines are cleary Sea People, but it seems likely to me that
    many of the defeated invaders were settled in Nubia. Central Egypt was
    already at that time relatively densely populated, and fortified garrisons
    were situated in the border areas rather than in the Egyptian mainland
    (Dunn 2015). A settlement of Sea Peoples in Nubia would explain the
    European population expansion into Africa.

    Kindest regards
    Yours,

    Martin C. Ross
    Erlangen, Germany


    ___________________________


    Dunn, Jimmy (2015) Military architecture of Ancient Egypt.
    [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/fortresses.htm | 21. Oct. 2015]


    Gallego-Llorente, M.; Jones, E.R.; Eriksson, A.; Siska, V.; Arthur, K.W.;
    Arthur, J.W.; Curtis, M.C.; Stock, J.T.; Coltorti, M.; Pieruccini, P.;
    Stretton. S.; Brock, F.; Higham, T.; Park, Y.; Hofreiter, M.; Bradley,
    D.G.; Bhak, J.; Pinhasi, R.; Manica, A. (2015) „Ancient Ethiopian genome
    reveals extensive Eurasian admixture throughout the African continent.“
    Scienceexpress (2015-10-08) 10.1126/science.aad2879

    Onomasticon of Amenope
    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomasticon_of_Amenope | 9. Nov. 2015]

    Papyrus Harris I [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Harris_I | 9. Nov.
    2015]

    Peczynski, Shell (2009) The Sea People and their migration. New Brunswick,
    NJ. (Rutgers Univ.: PhD; 2009).
    [http://history.rutgers.edu/undergraduate/honors-program/honors-papers-2009/155-the-sea-people-and-their-migration/file
    | 11. Nov. 2015]

    Török, Lászlo (1997) The kingdom of Kush: handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic
    civilization. Leiden; New York; Cologne: Brill. (Handbook of oriental
    studies; 31,1).

    Urnfield culture [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture | 13.
    Nov. 2015]

    Wachsmann, Shelley (2000) „To the sea of the Philistines.” The Sea Peoples
    and their world: A re-assessment. Ed. Oren, Elieser D. Philadelphia, PA:
    Pennsylvania Univ. Mus., 2000: 103-141.

    Woudhuizen, Frederik C. (2006) The ethnicity of the Sea Peoples.
    Rotterdam. (Univ. Rotterdam: PhD; 2006).
    [http://www.academia.edu/7287651/The_Ethnicity_of_the_Sea_Peoples_dissertation_
    | 11. Nov. 2015]

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Austin, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the part of the paper concerning ancient Neolithic farmer back migration into Africa has been retracted by the one of the authors. Listen to his radio interview here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06yfjdp
    NeilB

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Neil, yes, the paper was retracted.
    Which goes to show that sometimes the programs used to run simulations can add a bias to studies. Who knows what other ones lie hidden in previous papers on genetics.
    I have already posted about the subject of "models" and "simulations"


    http://www.nature.com/news/error-found-in-study-of-first-ancient-african-genome-1.19258

    ReplyDelete

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