The deep genetic structure of Africa reveals unique ancestry of inhabitants of the Angolan Namib

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Africa is the birthplace of modern humans and the continent with the highest level of genetic diversity. While ancient DNA studies are revealing some aspects of the genetic structure of Africa before the spread of food production, issues concerning DNA preservation have limited the insights from ancient DNA.

Hoping to find clues in modern populations, researchers from a Portuguese-Angolan TwinLab ventured into the Angolan Namib desert—a remote, multi-ethnic region where different traditions met.

Among the communities the team encountered are the Kwepe, a pastoral group who used to speak a language known as Kwadi."Kwadi was a click-language that shared awith the Khoe languages spoken by foragers and herders across southern Africa," explains Anne-Maria Fehn, a linguist from CIBIO who participated in the fieldwork and was able to interview what may well be the last two speakers of Kwadi.

"Khoe-Kwadi languages have been linked to a prehistoric migration of eastern African pastoralists," adds Rocha, whose research focuses on southern African population history. In addition, the team contacted Bantu-speaking groups that are part of the dominant pastoral tradition of southwest Africa, as well as marginalized groups whose origins have been associated with a foraging tradition, distinct from that of the neighboring Kalahari peoples, and whose original language was supposedly lost.The last two speakers of Kwadi.

"In agreement with our previous studies on the maternally-inherited DNA, most genome-wide diversity segregates according to socio-economic status. A lot of our efforts were placed in understanding how much of this local variation and global excentricity was caused by genetic drift—a

 

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