Thread by @evilvillain1231

both of these are reconstructions of Nazlet Khater 2, a 35,000 year old skull found in Egypt, left by a team of Brazilian scientists, right by @Sulkalmakh. interesting how different they turned out

(a thread of African genetics and prehistory in general...)

in particular there seems to be major disagreement over nose shape, mandible length, and skin around the eyes. given the scientist's methodology and access to 3D materials (it seems they even had the skull's mandible), there's is probably more accurate

(and yes, soft-tissue features can be predicted from craniofacial morphology; in the case of soft tissue around the eyes, this is related to orbital and nasal structure. these are from another set of reconstructions, from medieval Norway)

so far, there haven't been any DNA studies on Nazlet Khater 2, but given his location (Egypt) and extremely old age (33,000 BC), there's a good chance he's a representative of Ancestral North Africans, a mysterious lineage named in 2018 by @iosif_lazaridis...

Ancestral North African was devised as a population that accounts for the enigmatic Sub-Saharan African ancestry in 14,000 year old Iberomaurusian remains in northern Morrocco, ancestry which didnt quite match any living SSA population but seemed shifted toward East Africa

Iberomaurusians were the 23,000 - 9000 BC hunter-gatherers of North Africa. more than half of their ancestry was Dzudzuana-like non-African (Common West Eurasian + Basal Eurasian). during the Mesolithic, a IM-like population migrated back into the Levant

admixing with more Dzudzuana-like natives, and forming the Natufians, sedentary grain-gatherers and the direct ancestors of the world's first farmers (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A). the Natufians were also likely the speakers of Proto or Pre-Proto-Afro-Asiatic,

and they would migrate 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 into Africa after 8000 BC, spreading Eurasian ancestry and agriculture/pastoralism across Northern and East Africa, eventually giving rise to such people as historical-era Ancient Egyptians.

Agriculture also spread north and east from the Levant, and Neolithic Anatolians had some Natufian-admixture. Neolithic Anatolians would then colonize Europe starting around 7000 BC, introducing ancestry that still makes up a significant amount of modern European DNA

thus Europeans have a 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 amount of Ancestral North African DNA. it could very well be the reason why Y-DNA haplogroup E1b1b is extant (in small amounts) among Europeans (and Middle Easterners)

in the simplest understanding, Ancestral North Africans are a population that diverged from Mota-related East Africans in the Paleolithic and are the most closely related SSA-population to Eurasians.

that's the 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵 understanding (based off of what little scholarly research exists on this population). more in-depth analyses disagree on the exact lineage between ANA and other SSA populations, and to which (and what extent) ANA contributed to other SSA populations

read more: Are All Africans Genetically North African? revoiye.com/are-we-all-gen…

note this here, and let me return to my comment bringing up haplogroup E1b1b; E1b1b is strongly associated with most Afro-Asiatic speaking populations, and was present in low numbers among Neolithic Anatolians, who introduced to Europe. it is nearly ubiquitous among

Natufian remains, and it was almost certainly introduced there (to the Levant) by the Iberomaurusian-like North African population that helped form the Natufians. haplogroup E1b1b is ultimately a descendant of macrohaplogroup E-M96, which most likely originated in East Africa

(there's been disagreements and research into the possibility that E, and its parent, macrohaplogroup DE, originated in Eurasia, but as of now an African origin has the most support.)

E1b1b's sibling haplogroup is E1b1a, whose branches are the most common y-DNA haplogroups among West Africans (and the many Bantu peoples across the continent, who originated in West Africa).

[from how i understand it], West Africa had at least 3 waves of settlement. the first, Basal West Africans, occurred very deep prehistory, close to the emergence of modern humanity itself over 300,000 years ago. the unusually archaic Iwo Eleru skull of Nigeria ~11,000 BC, as well

as the skull's associated Middle Stone Age tool industry. Basal W. Africans may have also been related to the Aterian industry of the Middle Stone Age (preceding the Iberomaurusians) and the 300,000 year old Jebel Irhoud man of Morocco, the oldest-discovered modern human remains

BWA would have carried very basal y-haplogroups like A00 and A0, still present in small amounts among modern West Africans.

Starting around 14,000 BC, West Africa was then settled by a population (vaguely) named "West African Hunter Gatherers". these people used

Late Stone Age microlithic technology (unlike the more primitive Middle Stone Age tech of the Basal West Africans), and were closely related to modern day pygmies of Cameroon and the Congo. Groups of WAHG all the way into the early modern era (~1500 AD), and consistently

feature in the mythology of many contemporary West African populations.

WAHG were carriers of y-haplogroup B, still the most common among Central African pygmies and non-Bantu, non-Afro-Asiatic East Africans.

The Shum Laka remains of western Cameroon, circa 6000 BC, were found to be 65% Basal WA and 35% WAHG, and had a mix of haplogroups A and B

finally, staring around 8000 BC, out of the Green Sahara came the people responsible for the majority of modern West African DNA, the progenitors of the Niger-Congo languages (or, at the very least, the Atlantic-Congo languages), as well as eventual independent inventors of

agriculture, metallurgy, and civilization.

(taking a break gonna come back to this later today, posting what i have so far so i dont accidentally click something or the page refreshes and i lose it all)

ok time to finally finish this

so around 10,000-7500 BC in the far south of Algeria, then covered by tropical savannah and wetlands, we see the appearance of a new cultural complex, distinct from the Iberomaurusians/Capsians (IM + Natufians) to the north...

this culture is known from tool evidence, ceramics, and rock art (though the earliest engravings may have been created by a different population than the paintings of the Round Head Period c. 7500 BC, the latter being the one of interest here)

paintings of people from the Round Head Period show side profiles with conspicuously African features; from the Pastoral Period and beyond theres an increase of people depicted with Europoid profiles (and arguably lighter skin), associated with a regional increase in pastoralism

Some authors have suggested remarkably conservative continuity between the cultural depictions of Round Head Period art, and the practices of many modern West African groups (though this could arguably also be overinterpretation)

around 9400 BC in central Mali we have evidence of pottery, some of the earliest in the world and predating the ceramics of the RHP. This culture could represent an origin point for the RHP, or represents the extent of expansion out of the Sahara at a coincidentally earlier date

Also, a revision of an earlier point in this thread; Microlithic-using West African Hunter Gatherers began inhabiting that part of the continent by at least 30,000 BC, not 14,000 BC (elsewhere described as "Western Central Africa", hence my confusion)

actually, it seems Cameroon is not included within "West Africa"....whatever, Shum Laka is at the western edge of Cameroon, so close enough

Anyway,
Broadly contemporaneous with these happenings is the Kiffian culture of Gobero in central Niger, existing from 8000-6000 BC. The Kiffians left behind skulls which have been linked to contemporary West Africans on the basis of cranial and dental morphology

All of the aforementioned evidence, IMO, starts to form a picture of proto-Niger-Congo people and their entry into West Africa.

Niger-Congo is a contentious language family; it attempts to link the (universally accepted) Atlantic-Congo family (which includes the Bantu languages)

with several other families/isolates of West Africa and a few in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

The problem is that the linguistic evidence linking many of these branches, largely put forward by Joseph Greenberg in the 60s, is tenuous, with some linguists now rejecting the family

Therefore I believe Niger-Congo may be a case where unity can only be substantiated through archaeological and genetic evidence*, as the languages themselves have diverged too much and possibly received significant influence & creolization from earlier West African languages

*(Another example might be Altaic, long rejected on linguistic grounds, but recently given renewed interest as several northeast Asian populations have

been shown to share a significant amount of genetic ancestry stemming from a Neolithic metapopulation around the Amur river).

As previously touched upon, the defining y-DNA haplogroup of Africans speaking languages included in Niger-Congo is E, particularly E1b1a1-M2, a sibling lineage to E1b1b, the defining y-haplogroup of Iberomaurusians, and later the IM-admixed Natufians, with all E lineages

believed to have ultimately originated in East Africa.

The SSA-ancestry in Iberomaurusians was found to be best represented by modern day Yoruban and Mende people. The right image (from the same study) has DInka possessing a large amount of ancestry that maxes out in

Yoruba and Mende (when not accounting for additional Basal admixture) which would substantiate findings from "Are All Africans Genetically North African" that both West Africans and Nilotic East Africans seem to derive a significant amount of ancestry from the same metapopulation

Additionally, this study from 2017 (before the naming of Ancestral North African) characterizes these same two groups as arising from a mixture of Basal West Africans and another ancestry "most closely related to eastern Africans and non-Africans".

Thus the theory I am drawing together here is that "Niger-Congo" peoples largely descend from an ancestral population which left East Africa in the Paleolithic, going on to populate the Green Sahara and eventually West Africa; a metapopulation which also gave rise to the

SSA-component in Mesolithic North Africans, thus being distantly related to the formation of the Afro-Asiatic family as well; Nilo-Saharan (another family with more genetic evidence than the quite weak linguistic evidence) may have also been an offspring of these Ancestral North

African populations.

Between 4000 and 3000 BC, as desertification of the Saharan began, the people associated with the Round Head artists, the Ounjougou ceramists, the Kiffians, the possible Niger-Congo speakers, began migrating deeper south into West Africa.

They brought with them cattle pastoralism, almost certainly adopted through interaction with the Capsians who brought them from the Levant; however, along the way, as a further adaptational strategy in response to the changing environment, they independently domesticated

pearl millet, followed later by crops such as rice, yams, sorghum, and cowpeas. This spread of agriculture would have been the main vector for the spread of the language family throughout the region. Basal West Africans and the pygmy-related hunter gatherers were absorbed, though

only the former seems to a consistent and necessary genetic component of modern West African ancestry; given the small number of ethnicities tested, admixture with this group probably varies, and might be more significant around the coastline.

in central Nigeria circa 1500 BC, the settling of West Africa by agropastoralists culminates in the emergence of the Nok civilization, who by ~500 BC are iron metallurgists and makers of magnificent terracotta sculptures. Their use of iron was possibly an independent development

reached the reply limit lol. still continuing...

more terracotta sculptures from Nok

the figures in the fourth image are from the same area as the Nok Civilization, but they were created in the 1800s, demonstrating more than 2000 years of stylistic continuity

And thus we finally return to Nazlet Khater 2. As no DNA analysis has been performed on him, his association with the mythical Ancestral North Africans is largely conjectural on my (and other's) part. Nonetheless, using that as a jumping off point, I attempted to contextualize

him within the broader picture of African archaeogenetics and population movements. If he was associated with haplogroup E1b1, then over the next 35,000 years, one branch of his family would go on to intermarry with migrants from the Levant in North Africa...

in the Northwest they would form the Iberomaurusians, in the Northeast, the Mashubians. The latter would leave Africa, intermarrying further with the Keberans of the Levant, hunter-gatherers who exploited wild grains to a unusual degree...their children would be the Natufians,

hunters who gathered grain to such a degree that they formed sedentary settlements. eventually they domesticated these plants and built increasingly sophisticated villages, becoming the worlds first agriculturalists, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Culture.

10,000 years ago, they built a 28 foot tall tower at the proto-city of Jericho, the first in a long lineage of Jericho towers over the next 6500 years. They were covering the skulls of their ancestors in plaster, crafting peculiar anthropomorphic statues, and wearing weird masks

They were around 12% Ancestral North African; Anatolian Neolithic Farmers were in turn 14% Natufian and thus around 1.7% Ancestral North African. The amount in Europeans is therefore so little as to be nearly nonexistent, but it nonetheless spread E1b1b to the continent, a

haplogroup which reaches rates as high as 40% of Albanian men.

The agricultural and pastoral children of the Natufians would then return to Africa, profoundly transforming the northern and eastern parts of the continent and eventually giving rise to such people as

the ancient Egyptians, bringing things full circle back to the place where Nazlet Khater 2 lived and died.

On the other side of the continent, another branch of Nazlet Khater 2's family tree, the cousins of the E1b1bs, would disperse across the Sahara, eventually

settling West Africa, where they independently developed agriculture and civilization and birthed the many languages and cultures of the regions which have survived to the present.

Sometime between 2000 and 1000 BC, one of those cultural groups, the proto-Bantus, would

begin their expansion out of somewhere around Cameroon to culturally conquer the rest of Africa, reaching the continent's southern fringes by 500 AD and becoming the single largest ethnolinguistic family in Africa and one of the largest in the entire world.

https://twitter.com/evilvillain1231/status/1641635791930531840

fact or cap #27.