I used to agree with the old Ehret/Kieta model for the E3b1 Y chr as a marker for Afro Asiatic, but its become apparent that all the population movements into the near East involving this Y chromosome are too ancient to be tacked on to any modern language group. A few months of rolling this idea around, and the DNA evidence and dating seems to support an Asian origin a lot better.
Against an African origin-
The Genetics
Once it became apparent that Omotic as an Afro Asiatic language was dubious, with it being shown to be a language isolate by several linguists- it turned out all the African Afro Asiatic speakers show Neolithic Y chromosome input from the near East, in some cases overwhelmingly. The main examples for this are the Ouldeme and other Chadic speaking tribes in Cameroon, who have tested as having an outstandingly high percentage of the Y chromosome R1b, a Eurasian Y chromosome that fits the spread of Chadic languages like a glove. As far as I can tell, the ultimate point of origin for this seems to be SE Turkey, which is within the origin area of the agricultural Neolithic expansion. So, most Chadic male ancestry traces back to the origin point of the Neolithic, which is a big supporter of an Asian origin for Afro Asiatic.
Another Y chromosome that shows a population movementthat tracks Afro Asiatic is from the Nile delta – the M81 Y chromosome. The advent of this mutation is extremely close in time to the entry of R1b’s entry into North East Africa, and it appears to have spread out into North Africa with the Neolithic farmers, and also as far as Somalia, where it is found at a very low rate, but just enough to confirm a Neolithic movement from North to South along the Nile.
The language and its dates
Mainly my gripes are based on Dr Ehret’s work on AA languages. His inclusion of Omotic as an Afro Asiatic language was always speculative, and now it appears that it shows no more than a chance relationship to the Cushitic languages (Theil). I suspect he was keen to include it as an AA language as it shores up the African origin by providing him a pre agricultural Afro Asiatic language in East Africa- which now seems to be wishful thinking on Ehrets part.
Looking at Dr Ehret’s dates for the Afro Asiatic group, one major flaw leaps out. He dates proto Cushitic at 10,000 BP, which he describes as an African pastoralist language with goats and sheep. This is impossible, as goats and sheep do not enter Africa until 2,000 years after this date. If it were correct as a date, this would locate proto Cushitic in the North of the Levant. Assuming that the Cushitic branch is native to East Africa, the arrival of ovicaprines to the area is first known about 5,500 BP in the Sudan. Assuming that the Cushitic branch moved along the coastal areas ( the joining dialects between Egypt and East Africa later wiped out by Asian Semitic languages, and a Nilo Saharan block to them in Nubia), a date of about 6,000 BP for the separation of Cushitic in East Africa would be more likely. This casts major doubt on Ehret’s dating methods for all his work, and really casts a big shadow over his dating of technologies by dating the proto language (the basis of most of his claims for early pastoralism in Africa). This would probably mean Nilo Saharan was the indigenous language group of East Africa prior to the Neolithic.
The dates for proto Cushitic mean his 14,000 BP date for proto Erythraic (ditching the older 15k date for PAA as the Omotic Branch is now defunct) corrects to 10,000 BP assuming his rate of miscalculation is stable at 40%. As a minor note, I’ve seen text books place a maximum date of 10k for any language family, which makes me query Ehret’s work on dates for yet another reason. This 10k age limit would also support all his dates being 40% too old, which would also re-date Cushitic to about 6,000 BP- which agrees with my own estimation.
All the known population movements in this 10k time frame are into Africa, matching the expansion of the Neolithic, which also matches the expansion of the Y chromosomes R1b and M81 in Africa. There’s no known cultural expansion out of Africa that could fit this time frame or movements of African Y chromosomes/mt DNA dated to this era in the near East.
The ancient presence of Semitic in Asia.
Then there is the proximity of Semitic and proto Indo European languages. Numerous agricultural terms turn up in PIE, words for barley, bull etc, that are all suggestive of the Semitic family being present close to the origin point of IE languages when they adopted farming (I’m not ignoring that they may possibly have had the same root dialect at one time). After reconciling the ‘Turkish’ and ‘North of the Black sea’ origins for proto Indo European (the older IE languages seem to be Anatolian, the last node was ‘Kurgan’) this would place Semitic in contact with older PIE dialects around 9,000 BP. Bearing in mind the age for PAA is needs to be about 10,000 BP for at least two good reasons, this is also not supportive of an African origin for Afro Asiatic.
Theorised tree for Afro Asiatic (my fifth revision)…
The population movements suggest to me that the African AA languages all came from a common tongue at the Nile delta, and then split up from each other and differentiated very quickly as the pastoralist groups moved away more swiftly than the farmers. This might explain why proto Afro Asiatic has been such a bugger to reconstruct; it’s right on the maximum age, and some of the root words for crops and farming implements etc could have been lost by the rapidly moving pastoralist groups who never grew crops.
The main reason I’ve focused on the R1b is the ‘sore thumbness’ of its presence in central/West Africa, and the M81 because of its Neolithic age and Egyptian place of origin. I’ve steered clear of the J1 and J2 Y chromosomes in this entry, as at present it isn’t very clear what entered East And North Africa in the Capsian, what with the Neolithic and what with the Arabs. J seems to have arrived in Africa in three waves. Really it needs an in-depth going over by a specialist study to untangle it, but some papers do discuss J arriving into Africa with the Neolithic, and it is seen in East Africa as far as Somalia, so it’s not impossible one minor J hg also matches the distribution of AA languages in Africa too.
Mathilda's Anthropology Blog. 
Can’t agree. I strongly favor an African (Nile area) origin for AA – and largely for what I have read in this blog.
My main objections follow:
R1b
R1b1b2a1 in Europe can’t be Neolithic or of later date because there’s no possible Neolithic or post-Neolithic culture that could explain its present distribution. Only Dolmenic Megalithism and Bell Beaker roughly approach its extent but neither can be considered a demic migration, much less of such dimensions as would be needed to create such an impact. Plus Bell Beaker is just an epiphenomenon, not even a true culture, affecting only minorities (“the guild”). Plus neither Portugal nor Bohemia, the centers of diffusion of these phenomenons are sufficiently homogeneously R1b as to have originated its spread.
If R1b1b2a1 must be at most Epipaleolithic in Europe, then R1b* in Africa must or at least can be pre-Neolithic perfectly. That is my impression regarding the Nile at least, even if for one of those odd founder effects, the R1b carriers appear to have been the main vector of Chadic spread, possibly at a later date.
NW Africa
What would be your putative vector of Afroasiatic into the NW Africa (the Berber country)? Neolithic influxes? Which ones? Maybe the Neolithic of Capsian tradition or maybe the Cardium Pottery Neolithic restricted to the coasts?
In both cases we face essential contradictions, as the tool panoply is the pre-Neolithic one, at least in most cases, indicating demic and cultural continuity (as happens with CP in Europe too). Also there’s no possible “genetic vector” other than E1b1b1 and, to a lesser extent, J1 (but Berber is not Semitic not apparently too closely related).
For some reason you have decided now that is closest to Chadic but there’s no particular genetic connection between these two areas, specially in the most likely vector type: Y-DNA. But if Berber would be product of J1, it should be related to Semitic (and possibly Egyptian too).
Diversity
Even if you consider that Omotic is not AA, you still have the greatest diversity in Africa, with 4 linguistic subfamilies (while Asia only has one). You also have highest diversity in the E1b1b area (3 subfamilies) and you do have E1b1b in significative amounts in the possible core area of the other: Semitic. The only exception is Chadic with its high R1b but R1b and E1b1b cross paths in Sudan and it’s an obvious case of founder effect.
Neolithic words
You put too much emphasis in this. Neolithic words would have spread with Neolithic economy which has aspects of cultural diffusion but it’s not necesarily (nor often, according to the archaeological record) demic migration. That way, as people adopted Neolithic, they often borrowed words from the ones who they had learned from, exactly the same we now use telephone, internet and auto internationally. I have found at least two words that seem to have done that this side of the Mediterranean:
– Ahari (Basque) resembles a lot aries (Greek) – in both languages it means ram (and is not IE).
– Iri, ili, uli, uri, etc. seem to have spread from the Atlantic to India, with a likely origin in West Asia (Iriko – Jerico, Irusalem – Jerusalem, Ur, Uruk, Sumerian uru = city, Latin urbs = city, Ilion, Elis, Iberian -ili suffix in so many towns, Basque hiri, found in varied forms in toponyms, can’t recall which was the exact word form in Dravidian…)
I bet it was the same in the AA continuum as Neolithic spread.
But does AA use the word iri or similar? I believe it does not (though maybe you find some toponyms at the CP area). This would be a significative piece of evidence that AA did not originate in West Asia. Not conclusive but certainly indicative.
-What of Ongota and name specifically what work of Ehret you have read? Have you corresponded with him at all? I have correspondance from Ehret specifically stating there are no SPECIFIC words for “Sheep” or “Goat” in Proto AA, There are words that could be seen as that in SOME families of A.A. but in other families that same word constructs back to a Native African Animal / a Gazelle or something.. At the earliest stage of P.A.A. they only have the Donkey – which is an African animal. Would you mind corresponding with him via the blog and posting the discussion?
– How does M81 Travel to Somalia and skip over Ethiopia when it is traveling via the Nile valley? Also ALL studies state that M81 is a fairly YOUNG mutation, by what authority are you changing the age to 10kya when leading geneticists note it at almost HALF that age. If you have an issue with ages of mutations how is it off by 100%? Also doesn’t that just mean ALL other mutations ages increase as well? Please explain.
You also list R1b as incoming farmers but the majority of R1b carriers such as the Ouldeme or the Hausa are Nomadic. Other groups that have R1 such as the Fulani etc speak Niger-Congo languages and are Nomadic as well and have always been. When looking at all populations that have been sample fro R1X most of them speak Niger Congo NO AA.
And they show this migrations coming into Africa maybe 5 or 6 kya. Chadic is known to be older than that. Viktor Cerny et al 2009 Connected Chadic speaking populations to Eastern African Mtdna L3f Expanding 8000 kya.
Also Semitic is the youngest branch of A.A. it is still the ONLY one represented outside of Africa.
If it was R1 that spread Afro-Asiatic with FARMING technologies then the majority of R1 carriers [Europeans] would be speaking Afro-Asiatic. Or you would at least have more represetntaitons OUTSIDE of Africa where R1 farmers would have been influential. The other major hotspot of R1 outside of Africa is Dead Sea Jordan. And Jordan has an Affinity with Africa, (High M123) and they TOO are Nomadic, not farmers. That is just one problem with seeing Proto AA as Agricultural language. Others see Proto AA as Hunter gatherer / forager.
And speaking of Migration you keep saying there were NO migrations out of Africa at that time. What studies are you reading? Many of the studies you state by Cruciani say the exact opposite and list dates AND mutaitons.
M123 for instance has an ORIGIN in the Levant or middle East. In order for that origin to be the Levant : AFRICAN’s carrying M35* had to migrate there. in this case M123 can simple be seen as African ancestry IN the Levant.
Noting ONLY M78 Cruciani noted trans-Mediterranean migrations directly from northern Africa to Europe (mainly in the last 13.0 ky)”, and flow from North Africa to western Asia between 20.0 and 6.8 ky ago”
-Some of that migration is M78* ancesral going on to create V13.
-Some of that migration is V12 seen in many areas carrying M78
Some of that migration is V22 seen in many areas carrying M78
This is migrations from Africa during that time.
The date of mutation M123 is 11 KYA – Sometime prior to that East Africans carrying M35* had to migrate to the Levant.
This is migration from Africa during that time.
Battaglia 2008 ALSO notes M78* traveling out of Africa around 10kya from NUBIA.
This is migration from Africa during that time.
Sometimes you make statements that are not supported by some of the Authors that you quote. Africans DID migrate out in the Neolithic.
Igbo, the mutation estimation for M81 is around 5k, but it has enough slack in the dating to match the 8k expansion from the Nile outwards. And the R1b dates also come into the same area, and I also said 8k in Africa). In fact, theres only one population movement that it can fit into (the expanding neolithic) as a founder efect. Same for R1b.
The other major hotspot of R1 outside of Africa is Dead Sea Jordan. And Jordan has an Affinity with Africa, (High M123)
WRONG…The R1 in Jordan is not the same as the R1b in the Ouldeme– its plain R1 -M173 -without the Euarsian ‘b’ mutation.
R1b- incoming farmers from the near east but carried out by herders. I never said it was carried by farmers into the Cameroon area. And I’ve made clear that was the result of a founder effect, there’s no reason for it to be dominant in any other population movement. L3f, as I recall, is native to Saharan areas, and would be a ‘pick up’ by R1b on its south west route. I’m sorry Igbo, but the mass of Neolithic Eurasian Y chromsomes in the middle of Chadic speaking people really doens’t help an African origin, and the 8k expansion suggested by the L3f is exactly what I’m suggesting as a split- off age for Chadic anyway. And the paper suggests north Est Africa as an oprigin point for Chadic too.
If you look through papers Y chr expansions always come of way too young to match the Mt DNA, particularly in older papers, which this is from. 8k for R1b entering, and for M81 to start spreading, is well with the realm of the possible and even probable, particularly when known population movements are considered from archaeological evidence.
I have correspondance from Ehret specifically stating there are no SPECIFIC words for “Sheep” or “Goat” in Proto AA,
Ehret says in one of his books that goats and sheep are present in proto Cushitic.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1i-IBmCeNhUC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=proto+Cushitic+ehret+goat+sheep&source=bl&ots=qnl8ZGJ6bN&sig=sX24DvueNfZW5nRIc4PV3wQU7cw&hl=en&ei=tBVnSuf7Ks7KjAe2p9SfAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8
He’s not said so for PAA and I never said he did, although a couple of other sources do reconstruct words for sheep, goat and even fields/slave etc in PAA, which also isn’t helpful for an african origin for it. As I said, he’s either massively botched the dating (probable), or Cushitic has to originate in the near East (unlikley), as that’s the only place with goats etc at that time.
Also Semitic is the youngest branch of A.A. it is still the ONLY one represented outside of Africa
Really?
I’ve seen other sources that disagree with that, one text actually named it as the most divergent from the other branches. Its apparent youth is from lack of internal diversity because a lot of the older dialects were wiped out, the same goes for berber. The last node for Semitic was about 6k ago, and there’s no way an african origin for it is possible, and a lot of the later divesity was erased by Arabic, so working out relative ages by internal diversity is at best sloppy practice.
As for the M78- It’s been a few months since I read the papers, but as I recall the expansion of M78 from Africa is very ancient, 20k from Cruciani. Stone tool cultures and bones nail the M78 Nubian mutation arriving in the levant about 22k ago with the Kebarans, it does not indicate some late spurt out of Africa; its eurasian son V13 has a more much more recent age and not an african point of origin. V12 also has a much older date, almost as old as the m78 (18k, Cruciani) so its not surprising if it travelled around with its only slightly older m78 ‘father’. V22 also has a Mesolthic date – why you are assigning it to Neolithic movements out of Africa when it hardly makes it past the Sinai and in totally the wrong era I don’t know
BTW… Battaglia said of V13..
Not ‘African people’. I’d like to comment that African physical traits and stone tools are observed in Kebaran/early Natufians, so the population movement from African needed to be well prior to the Mesolithic- so Cruciani (who made in in depth study of M78) is more likey to be accurate on dating for this then Battaglia.
As for M123- the East African E-m34 version of it (which is hardly all you’ll find out of africa) is thought to be an introduction from the near East, not african in origin.
E-M34 chromosomes from Ethiopia show lower variances than
those from the Near East and appear closely related in
the E-M34 network (fig. 2D). If our interpretation is
correct, E-M34 chromosomes could have been introduced
into Ethiopia from the Near East.
And
The network of E-M78 and that of E-M123 are in agreement
with the hypothesis of their ancient presence in the Near East
and their subsequent expansion into the southern Balkans.
The divergence time (TD) (Zhivotovsky 2001) between the
Near East and European lineages has been estimated to a
range of 7–14 thousand years (ky) ago. Cinnioğlu et al.
(2004) found a high degree of variance of E-M123 in Turkey.
The older M123 in the near east is not Neolithic or even near to it in age the last estimate I looked at here is about 16k- it has a very wide sparse distribution and appears to be an old migrant out of Africa; too old to attach to a language group.
E1b1b1 is just too old Luis. You’d need a 20k plus age for AA as a family.
Luis, the R1b in chadic speaker is straight R1b, not any Hg common in Europe. Its entry to Egypt is put down about 4-6k, I cant see pre-Neolithic being likely for the date.
As was pointed out by a linguist in one book I read, the location of the most diversity isn’t infallible- they then then pointed to the Bantu languages as an example. All the African AA branches have traceable neolithic influences from Asia, or are in populations that are ultimately Eurasian for most of their ancestry.
neolithic words-
If Dr Ehret isists that the presence of tech/animal proto words in a proto language can be dated by his methods to be proof of that occurring at an old age, I don’t see why the reverse can’t be true. As for Grouping it with Berber, I was just assuming it went straight west, although from the R1b in the Sudan and the L3f in Chadics a Sudanese route is entirely possible along the west bank of the Nile as opposed to cushitic on the east coast.
Besides, as Igbo so irately pointed out the L3f mt shows an expansion of about 8k asscoiated with Chadic, and they also follow the R1b around.
You know I do not believe in TRMCA.
Anyhow, I just mentioned European R1b as comparsion. If the much derived R1b1b2a1 can’t be Neolithic, it means that the ancestral R1b of West Asia must be even older and that means that African R1b (more frequent in Sudan than Egypt) may have arrived there before Neolithic, maybe as part of the Epipaleolithic exchanges or whatever other process I cannot really discern well (like the Iberia-Upper Egypt-Southern Turkey artistic connection).
Re. words I don’t agree with either Ehret nor your counter interpretation. I think that dating or structuring a language family by Neolithic neologisms is essentially flawed, unless those Neolithic words would be from several different origins, which may provide then a negative evidence of diverse late influences.
Btw, do you discard Omotic as AA because of that and only that? If so, it would be a forced discard.
Btw, for some reason my previous post does not seem to appear. Is it my browser?
Regarding Cameroon and R carriers in Africa,
I was under the impression that most have R1* or M173*And NOT R1b – Most R1b is noted to be recent.
I will post sources:
“The M173 and P25 derived states in both our samples rule out a relationship to the R1*-M173 lineage previously found in Cameroon, Oman, Egypt and Rwanda….”
and
“R1b-P25 lineages in Fulbe and Bijagós are best
explained by recent European influence, at the time of the slave trade.”
-Alexandra Rosa et al 2007 [Guinea-Bissau Paper]
Compared to:
“All group IX African chromosomes are characterized by the presence of the M173 and M207 derived alleles and the absence of the downstream mutations.” [R1*]
ALSO
“Incontrast to the group IX chromosomes from Cameroon, all western Eurasian chromosomes were found to carry the M269 derived allele.”
M269 : R1b1b2
Fulvio Cruciani 2002.
Also
“Whereas the R1*-M173 undifferentiated lineage is present in all four populations, the two downstream mutations, M17 and M269, are confined to Egypt and Oman..”
Underhill 2004
M17 : R1a1
M269 : R1b1b2
From Hassan 2008 the Sudanese Fulani (again Nomads) have R1* and no P25
Regarding the Dead sea:
“Its high R1*-M173 frequency (40%) has until now only been found in northern Cameroonian samples.”
All these articles show populations in Africa to primarily be M173* or R1* The dead sea study also noted Dead Sea Jordanians to be outliners, also showing R1* underived.
Dead sea also only have 9% Haplogroup J!
and also the dead sea has mostly M34 not M123*. I belive they also tested the X chomosome and noted in their conclusion regarding the dead sea:
“All these evidences point to the Dead Sea as an isolated region perhaps with past ties to sub-Saharan and eastern Africa”
Flores / Gonzales 2005
To push my point, YES I understand that M34 was introduced back to Ethiopia but that IS the point. M35* Carriers which in this case and point we will call “Ethiopians” were living IN the Levant long enough for the mutations to happen in the first place. The populations has to actually GO there to come BACK. At what point do these “Ethiopians” cease being “Ethiopians” and become “Levantines” [That is a questions i cannot answer but it is NOT the point in which they step over an imaginary border.] In any case the genes are real and they didn’t get there or back to Africa through Osmosis. What is the date of such migration? Cruciani gives the dates I stated earlier.
Regarding Battaglia et al. 2008
Battaglia notes that the Mutation M78 takes places in a refuge in Nubia and those populations carrying M78* migrate northward and out of Africa following improvement in Saharan conditions 10kya, he also notes the finding of M78* IN Europe:
“The presence of E-M78* Y chromosomes in the Balkans (two Albanians)”
and
“While the eastern Sahara was depopulated, a refugium existed on the border of present-day Sudan and Egypt, near Lake Nubia, until the onset of a humid phase around 8500 BC”
followed with:
“The northward-moving rainfall belts during THIS period could have also spurred a rapid migration of Mesolithic foragers northwards in Africa, the Levant and ultimately onwards to Asia Minor and Europe, where they each eventually differentiated into their regionally distinctive branches.”
Regionally distinctive branches AFTER they reach Europe = V13.
As a description of Ancestry “M78*” is as African as M173* is Eurasian. M173* shows Eurasian Ancestry in Africa. If such Eurasians at that time had their own “Regionally distinctive branch”AFTER entering Africa it would simply be African specific Eurasian Ancestry.
I am not saying that there is NOT R1b in what has been noted as R1* but you have to post the sources. You post a lot of info, we cant just take it at face value because it tickles our ear. Please if you can post “quotes” and then post the name of the study and the author : That way is it easiest for those that are not well read to get the information and read it. This is ESPECIALLY imperative when you are linking Genetic markers with Languages and Cultures that have little support. With no source its just “Original Research” from you. I dont think that is a good route to go.
It was R1b, I checked a few months ago. Entry date to Africa about 4-6k ago. I did post it on the blog somewhere- that’s why I keep a blog as my memory isn’t perfect. You’ll have to dig for it though.
I’m not sure if the older studies just didn’t have enough resolution to seperate the R1 from the R1b, or if its the R1 that dates to the back migration with the M1 and U from different groups. I believe you do get U at low frequencies on the west coast.
Igbo, the ‘slave trade’ explanation completely fails to explain how chadic speakers are overwhelmingly R1b. And bearing in mind how common it is in the Sudan and that it has such an old entry date, assigning it to slave traders (GB paper)at at best lame, and was dropped a while ago after it emerged that it had an old entry in Africa. That paper didn’t really deal with the Chadic speakers or any group with R1 in large amounts, so why you included it I don’t know.
I’m not sure what Battaglia was writing- I’ll get back on that one. However, the M34 in the dead sea area probably dates back over 20k as well, so claiming thats from some Neolithcic movement OOA isn’ gonna work. It’s also failry common in Egypt, and its quite possibly only that comon in that one area of Jordan through a founder effect
Isolates in a corridor of migrations: a high-resolution analysis
of Y-chromosome variation in Jordan
You must have missed that bit then?
You can be EXTREMELY selective in what you post Igbo, to the point where you seem to be deliberately distorting text- and you accuse me of intellectual dishonesty.
There were never ‘Levantine Ethiopians’, they only had ties to Nubia/Egypt, and half of their ancestry was Eurasian too. What on earth possesed you to decide they were Ethiopians?
I live in Morocco. What about the three DIFFERENT Berber languages, which are so completely different as to be mutually unintelligible?
Madame Monet, in Marrakesh
Monet
They diverged about 2000 years ago as far as I can tell by the words for camel in proto berber, they are long past the point of being mutually intelligable after just a few hundred years.
Hi again, Mathilda. I just found a piece of info that you may be interested in, as it may (potentially) relate with the spread of haplogroup R and certainly affects the origins of microlithism.
Please, check this article at Scientific American, that deals with the most recent discovery of Michael Petraglia on South Asian prehistory: microliths there date to some 38,000 years ago (and not just some 10,000, as was believed until now). This seems to alter significatively the whole perception of where microlithic technologies first appeared and how they spread around. And I am suspecting they are relevant for the understanding of the spread of haplogroup P and derived lineages R and Q.
I think you have a better understanding of microlithic archaeology in Africa and West Asia than I do, so I’ll be glad to read what you have to say.
Enjoy.
Thanks for the links Luis. the whole family have come down with Swine flu- so I’ve not been around for a couple of weeks. I’ll take a look at it later.
Continuing from last post:
I have by now found the original Petraglia paper (PNAS – will be pay per view for 6 months) and a second press review. Furthermore, I have been sent a copy of the full paper and reviewed it at my blog.
I don’t like much the genetic intro but the archaeological part (most of the paper) is well worth. Microlithism is frequent in Southern South Asia since c. 35,000 BP (uncalibrated) and further North (Patna) since c. 30,000 BP.
The possible connection with P/R/R1b is my own speculation at this moment, naturally.
Mathilda: Swine flu! You are not being too lucky with your health as of late. 😦
Igbo: Original research is perfectly valid and that’s one of the reasons I write a blog instead of just documenting the Wikipedia. I often need to get out of the mainstream academic narrow viewpoints like the worship of TRMCA estimates. Obviously Mathilda is also entitled to make her own original research or whatever speculations she wants to fancy. One thing I’m sure: whether she’s right or wrong, whether I agree or not, she’s not just ranting but looking at the issues from a scientific viewpoint.
I’m having a miserable bloody year healthwise Luis.
To Luis. Yes i can understand that but i am looking for quotes to backup some of the ideas that she writes. I need to read the info for myself. Things are said so “as a matter of fact.” (Like the title of this article) and sometimes references are made to cultures and anthropology terms that some of us (Me) are not familiar with but cannot look up.
For example i asked was R1* in Cameroon R1*, R1b* or R1b1? – I then listed specific quotes (Journal and author) that noted it as R1* EVEN when R1b was tested for.
The only answer i got was :
“It was R1b, I checked a few months ago. Entry date to Africa about 4-6k ago”
Checked where? Checked from what article? What did it say exactly?
ALL the studies that i have found that speak of African Haplogroup R specifically in Cameroon is listed as R1* even in studies where R1b is tested for. SO then i am just back to asking the same questions. There are many other times where this happens. She can imply something in an article and even when the article is there I am unable to find what she bases her conclusion off of.
Some people reading this blog are not as versed in anthropology or genetics as either of you are. If would GREATLY help your reading audience if you included some quotes – specifically when implying Cultures to genetics or movements of humans in and out of different areas.
I can only look at this entire article as opinion, there is not one quote from any scientific article. If you have read Andrew Landcaster’s article on M35 he has many references.
____
Mathilda
“Levantine Ethiopians” – I dont mean that Ethiopians traveled directly to the Levant. What i DO mean is M35 taken as a marker that has an origin In “Ethiopia” amongst “Ethiopians” had to get to the Levant somehow where the mutation M123 came into existence: M123 is only a subclade of M35*.
For instance. You have an ultimate origin of the ‘Cameroonian R1b*’ in “Turkey”
That is NOT to say that “Cameroonians are Turks” But if YOU trace the root of the migration to Turkey then the populations at “Ending Point B” have genes that come from “Starting Point A” There is no way to get around it.
A second example E-M34 in Ethiopia. E-M34 has on origin in the Levant or Arabia. Seeing M34 in Ethiopia means populations migrated from the Levant/Arabia into Ethiopia. This is why uniparental markers are a good tool to mark migrations – They dont lie.
Sorry to hear that Mathilda. Hope things improve for you.
Umm I have to say that genetics canot be used to primarly prove and a language urheimat.. one has the look at language .. and reconstructed common congates.. and this hard to do in the case of AA I know since reconstruction have not gone that far and it’s age but that has the be the primary.
Just like in IE we know that the culture that spoke it hade horses, wheels, knew of snow, hade mead and ahde honey bees based on common reconstructed vocabulary .. and that is our most inportant for understanding the origin of a language family.
So if we find more congates we will find more about the where AA could possible been spoken,
have to say that genetics canot be used to primarly prove and a language urheimat
No, but they can show population movements relevant to the linguistsic data. And the recons for PAA show a Levantine origin for PAA.
Possible that this be to tally with the European Neolithic symbolism?
San Francisco museum
http://search3.famsf.org:8080/view.shtml?keywords=%73%77%61%73%74%69%6B%61&artist=&country=&period=&sort=&start=1&position=5&record=130051
British museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=275032&partid=1&searchText=swastika&numpages=10&orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx¤tPage=45
The swastika is an Indo European symbol Naif, You see it in very Easrly European cultures. Its thouight to be a solar symbol of some kind, possibly fire. You see it in Vinca script about 5000 BC (earliest known) so it’d be fair to say it was tied to the European neolithic
…Gana and Yemen objects pictures
I dont do to apologia of the last representation of this symbole, but I think that all the speciality form a whole: archeology, anthroplogy, linguistic, génetic, symbolism and surely also the myths (ref. Georges Dumézil). For symbolism, as I m not a scientist, I can a little bit allowing me to discuss the symbols execrated…
PS:
But if you think that this type comparison is again too recent (and so hot) in the history, delete my post
Igbo: I discussed Central African R1b1a here: African R1b is R1b1a, closely related to the West Asian/Italian R1b1a (two subclades in each region).
I have uploaded the relevant paper here for your interest.
I also reconstructed R1b spread in a map in this post, scatter that I understand that corresponds with the process of colonization of West Eurasia c. 50-30 Ka ago.