In “Ancient DNA reveals deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers.” an interdisciplinary team of 44 researchers presented their findings. An article on the findings of ancient DNA from six people buried between 18,000 and 5,000 years ago in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia was published today in Nature.
According to Harvard University professor David Reich, whose lab generated the data in the paper, “This more than doubles the antiquity of reported ancient DNA data from sub-Saharan Africa,” Because it’s a truly equal collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists, the study is particularly exciting.”
Reanalysis of previously published data on 28 individuals buried across the continent yielded new and improved results for 15 of those individuals. An unprecedented collection of ancient African DNA from hunters, gatherers, and fishermen was the result. Since there have been so many population shifts and admixtures in the last few thousand years, it is difficult to reconstruct their genetic legacy from modern humans.
The researchers were able to draw important demographic shifts that occurred between 80,000 and 20,000 years ago as a result of this data. Early on, people from different regions of the continent moved and settled in other regions, forming alliances and networks to trade, share information, and even find mates. According to the researchers, this social network helped them to survive and thrive.
According to Elizabeth Sawchuk, an associate professor at the University of Alberta and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, this time period saw a dramatic cultural shift in Africa as beads and pigments became commonplace. A shift in social networks and possibly even population size was long assumed by archaeologists to be the cause of major shifts in the archaeological record that occurred around 50,000 years ago. However, it has been difficult to test these hypotheses.
It was only now that she was able to “We’ve never been able to directly explore these proposed demographic shifts, until now,” the demographic shifts that have been predicted, she said. DNA and artifacts like stone tools and beads can’t tell us the whole story about our ancient past. The missing piece of the puzzle was ancient DNA, which now fills in the blanks about the people who lived thousands of years ago.
Author Mary Prendergast, an associate professor in anthropology at Rice University, said there are arguments that long-distance trade networks helped humans survive the last Ice Age.
According to her, “Humans began relying on each other in new ways,” People may have thrived because of their ingenuity and creativity.
Furthermore, researchers were able to show that by about 20,000 years ago, humans had largely ceased to move around.
By then, pre-existing social networks had made it possible for people to share information and technology without physically moving, speculated Sawchuk.
Prendergast claims that the research sheds light on how people in this part of Africa moved around and interacted with one another. However, the participants in this study lived farther away from the present-day Moroccan territory than Bangladesh is from Norway, which was previously thought to be where the earliest known African DNA originated.
An anthropology professor at Yale University and one of the researchers who unearthed the remains says that “Our genetic study confirms an archaeological pattern of more local behavior in eastern Africa over time,” Jessica Thompson said. To begin with, people found spouses from diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds. As time went on, they became more concerned with finding partners with whom they had a greater likelihood of cultural affinity.
Scholars from Canada, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and the United States were part of the research team, as well as many others. In order to complete the study, the curators and co-authors of African museums were instrumental in making it possible.
According to Potiphar Kaliba, the director of research at the museum department in Malawi, some of the skeleton samples were excavated 50 years ago, but their DNA is still intact despite the tropics’ hot and humid climates.
“This work shows why it’s so important to invest in the stewardship of human remains and archaeological artifacts in African museums,” Kaliba said.
Prendergast says the work also helps to address global inequities in research.
In comparison to Africa, “There are around 30 times more published ancient DNA sequences from Europe than from Africa,” Considering that Africa is home to the world’s most diverse human population, we have a lot more to learn.
According to John Yellen, director of the Archaeology and Archaeometry program at the National Science Foundation, the researchers have created a remarkable framework for studying the prehistory of humans in Africa. Humanity and our shared history can now be understood in a new light, thanks to this new perspective.
