Mediterranean Peopling

Europe and the Mediterranean have a complex and diverse evolutionary history. The first modern humans are believed to have entered Europe some 40,000 years ago. During the following millennia, the European continent underwent a series of environmental and climatic fluctuations, which caused much of the flora and fauna of the continent to move and migrate in order to maintain viable populations in the habitats to which they had evolved. Humans were no different. These factors, together with successive waves of new peoples from the Middle East and  elsewehere, such as the so-called Neolithic farmers, have combined to produce the present genetic variation in Europe today.

This project aims to investigate the present population structure of Europe by genotyping the Y chromosomes of men from across the continent. We are using samples from across the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, from Portugal to the Ukraine. We aim to investigate specific lineages of Y chromosomes which are othe common and believed to be associated with the first people of Europe, and will assess the genetic differentiation within them. This should allow us to date the movements of peoples around the Mediterranean, to eventually see whether specific lineages can be attributed to prehistorical and archaeological events

African Origins

It is now generally accepted that modern humans originated in Africa. Southern African genetic history, however, has so far been understudied, despite possibilities that this region might have played a significant role in the origins of modern humans. Current African studies use only a limited number of Southern African populations and a limited number of individuals within these populations. 

Southern Africa is an interesting area for studies of population genetic history for several reasons.
    1. Despite genetic, palaeobiological and archaeological evidence in support of an Eastern African origin for modern humans, there is also archaeological evidence showing signs of modern behaviour about 165,000 years ago on the coast of South Africa, and genetic studies of this region would help demonstrate what role Southern Africa might have played in the origins of modern humans.
    2. The Bantu expansion of farmers has been relatively well studied in other areas of Africa, but little is known about admixture between hunter-gatherers and these farmers in Southern Africa.

Studies of current populations could demonstrate ancient lineages present before the Bantu arrival into the region, and also show to what extent these different populations interacted with each other, and thus explain the variation seen today.

This project will investigate the population genetic history of southern Africa using both slow and fast evolving markers (SNPs and STRs) within autosomal regions of low recombination. Samples will be analysed from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and South Africa.

The Lesotho Project

Lesotho was the last part of southern Africa to be settled by Bantu-speaking peoples, when they reached its western lowlands in about AD 1600, and the highland regions from about the 1870s.  Prior to this Lesotho was inhabited by San groups (the so called “Mountain Bushmen”).  Genetic studies have suggested that southern African Khoisan possess some of the oldest, most distinctive lineages still extant. Archaeological evidence also supports these findings, with southern Africa being home to some of the oldest known anatomically modern human fossils.

Unfortunately, the majority of genetic studies in sub-Saharan Africa so far have concentrated on a very small number of samples from a limited number of populations, meaning that the genetic variation of the populations living in this region have been only sparsely surveyed. While oral histories and archaeological studies have explored admixture between the immigrant Bantu farmers and the San, limited genetic data is available on this.

    Therefore, studying the people of Lesotho could help shed some light onto the genetic diversity of southern Africa, as although the San are no longer occupants of Lesotho, through admixture with the Bantu famers their descendants are.  DNA sampled from living peoples in Lesotho can be used to provide proxy evidence of the genetic variation that originally characterised the southern San.  In addition, study of the Lesotho population will provide evidence as to the admixture that might have occurred between the hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers. 

During October-November 2009 samples were collected in Lesotho from communities in both highland and lowland regions. The project has been carried out in collaboration with archaeologists, and samples were collected in areas where archaeological excavations have been conducted.

    MtDNA and Y chromosome analysis is currently ongoing and will be analysed by comparison with data already available for other Khoisan populations. As part of this project we also plan to investigate low recombination autosomal regions and compared with samples from other regions. Information collected with regards to participants ethnic groups and languages spoken will also be analysed in order to aid conclusions about admixture events.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the significant support and help of The Lesotho Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, The Lesotho Ministry of Local Government, The Lesotho Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture. This work would not have been possible without the people of Lesotho: we would like to thank of all the volunteers for their cooperation and agreement to give samples as well as all the people that in different ways made this project possible. We would like to thanks among the others Njapeli Matlanyane and Nthontsi Qokolo for their invaluable help during the sampling sessions.  Chiara Batini, Sarah Marks and George Busby are greatly acknowledged for their invaluable support in the organization of the expedition and the collection of the samples. Peter Mitchell & Charles Arthur (University of Oxford) and Brian Stewart (University of Cambridge) provided instrumental advice on sampling and logistics. We finally would like to thank the Boise Fund for providing funding to conduct this research.

The Namibia Project

Namibia, a country in South-west Sub-Saharan Africa, is one of the few Southern African countries where hunter-gatherer, pastoralist and farmer lifestyles all coexist. This close proximity of three different lifestyles makes Namibia a very interesting place to study the interactions that occur between different ethnic groups with different lifestyles. Despite this potential, very few samples from Namibia are available in the literature, making comparisons both between ethnic groups within Namibia, and between the Namibian populations and other populations from across Southern Africa difficult.

Working in collaboration with Dr Ockie Oosthuizen and Erica Oosthuizen, in September 2010 saliva samples were collected in Namibia from 6 distinct ethnic groups within the country: Bushmen (Khoisan-speaking hunter-gatherers), Damara (Khoisan-speaking farmers), Herero (Bantu-speaking farmers), Himba (Bantu-speaking hunter-gatherers), Owambo (Bantu-speaking farmers) and Nama (Khoisan-speaking pastoralists). MtDNA and Y chromosome analysis will be carried out on these samples, which will then be compared to those collected in Lesotho, and those already available in the literature. We hope these comparisons will provide an insight into population movements and interactions within Namibia itself, perhaps showing how the different ethnic groups have interacted with each other. On a broader scale, this work will place Namibia in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa and demonstrate how the Namibian populations compare to those in the rest of the sub-continent, thus helping with the understanding of human population movements within the whole of Southern Africa. Of particular interest is the interaction between immigrant farming and indigenous hunter-gatherer groups, and also possible shifts in language/lifestyle that some of the Namibian ethnic groups seem to have undergone.

 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Namibian Ministry of Health for their assistance and permission to carry out this project. We would also like to thank the people of Namibia for volunteering their saliva. Dr Ockie and Erica Oosthuizen played an instrumental role in the organisation of the sampling trip, and their knowledge of the area and local contacts were invaluable. Sarah Marks is also acknowledged for help organising the trip and collecting samples, and Simon Marks for help with sampling. We were also assisted by many translators, without whom we would not have been able to collect the ethno-linguistic information. Finally we would like to thank The Wenner Gren Foundation, and the Boise Fund for providing the funding needed to carry out this project.     

The Peopling of South East Asia

See Sarena Che Omar's webpage