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. The work is published in the journal Science Advances.
“We were able to locate groups which were thought to have disappeared more than 50 years ago,” says Jorge Rocha, a population geneticist from Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO, University of Porto) who led the fieldwork, together with Angolan anthropologists Samuel and Teresa Aço from the Centro de Estudos do Deserto (CEDO).
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 a common ancestor with 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.
2023-09-23 02:48:03
Source from phys.org