Genome-wide variation in the Angolan Namib Desert reveals unique pre-Bantu ancestry.

ABSTRACT: Ancient DNA studies reveal the genetic structure of Africa before the expansion of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists; however, the impact of now extinct hunter-gatherer and herder societies on the genetic makeup of present-day African groups remains elusive. Here, we uncover the genetic legacy of pre-Bantu populations from the Angolan Namib Desert, where we located small-scale groups associated with enigmatic forager traditions, as well as the last speakers of the Khoe-Kwadi family's Kwadi branch. By applying an ancestry decomposition approach to genome-wide data from these and other African populations, we reconstructed the fine-scale histories of contact emerging from the migration of Khoe-Kwadi-speaking pastoralists and identified a deeply divergent ancestry, which is exclusively shared b

SUBMITTER: Oliveira S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10516492 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature