Lancaster - jogg · “mutational nomenclature.” For example, E1b1b1 is a name which describes...

Andrew Lancaster

Amongst other aims, this article will seek to respond tothe following challenge posted in 2004 (actuallyreferring mainly to work done in the 1990s) by RogerBlench (Blench, 2004a; further elaborated in Blench,2004b):

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Address for correspondence: Andrew Lancaster,[email protected].

Received: January 17, 2009; accepted: April 14, 2009.

Blench rounded off his justification of such scepticismabout population genetics by comparing it to “theclassification of human races by head types, nasalindices, or many another now-forgotten indicator.”

Although population genetics, comparative linguistics,and archaeology all aim to discover the same underlyingancient population movements, these three disciplinestend to work mainly in isolation, using very differentsorts of evidence.

For each of these three fields, the evidence is incomplete,and difficult to collect and interpret. So while the abovequotation was certainly not without valid grounds, it isstriking that Blench’s criticisms are of a type with whichboth archaeological and linguistic researchers are alsooften faced.

One thing which is particularly notable about genetics,is that this is the newest and fastest developing of thesethree types of research.

The present article seeks to review only some of thedevelopments in these fields which seem to showpotential for increased multi-disciplinary dialogue. Itwill specifically look at the much-debated area ofNorthern African and Middle Eastern contacts before,during and after the Neolithic period in human pre-history in these regions, the period when people learntto process foods intensively, to herd animals, to makepottery, and perhaps most critically of all, to practicetrue farming, as opposed to collecting only foods foundin the wild.

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Prehistoric Epochs

-20000 -19000 -18000 -17000 -16000 -15000 -14000 -13000 -12000 -11000 -10000 -9000 -8000 -7000 -6000 -5000 -4000 -3000 -2000 -1000 0

Years Before Present

Climate

Levant

Maghreb

LastGlacialMaximum

Kebaran Complex (including later the“Geometric Kebaran” and Mushabian)

Iberomaurusian or Oranian Culture, mainly along coasts, but withapparent ingressions to the Sahara in wetter periods

Natufian Complex(including Harifian)

Splitting into Capsian (inlandTunisia/Algeria) and EpipaleolithicMediterranean (coastal)

Oldest Dryas

Pre-potteryNeolithic

Pottery andfarming

(fullNeolithic)

Pottery and DomesticAnimals (Neolithic

technologies)

Bølling -Older Dryas -

Allerød

YoungerDryas(drier)

First part ofHolocene: Preborealand Boreal (wetter)

Holocene

Metals."Proto-historical" period.

Metals.

"Proto-historical" and Historical period.

Discussion about prehistoric humanity tends to beframed in terms of “material cultures” such as the

(old stone age), (middle stoneage), and (new stone age). These termsdescribe technologies identified by archaeologists, andnot exact dates.

The literature also uses geological or climate-basedepoch names, such as and . Theexact definitions of these can also change with new data.Importantly, at least for any particular region,correspondences are understood to exist between theseterminologies, even if debateable and confusing, and soa rough guideline is given in .

Note that the full “package” of the Neolithic technologyof the Levant and Fertile Crescent, includes pottery. Inthis region, which was a source of farming technologies

for both Africa and Europe, there was a long period withfarming, but without pottery. In Northern Africa this isreversed, with pottery appearing in the Saharan andNilotic regions in the early Holocene, possibly also with“native cattle management” implying that some level ofbovine pastoralism may even have developed in Africafirst, although there are still doubts about this(Bellwood, 2005, p.99).

It is also important to note that the whole package ofNeolithic technology, did not always transfer together tonew regions. Farming itself may have entered Africa

later than it did Greece and Italy, and pottery appearedat almost the same time in Greece, Italy, and the MiddleEast.1

In a series of articles, Cruciani et al. (2002, 2004, 2006,2007) can be considered to have developed a set ofstandard theories concerning the most important ancientmovements of people reflected in the modern1 Bellwood 2005, p.101: “Like the Californian Indians, earlyHolocene Egyptians did not need agriculture and did not seek it.”

37Lancaster: Y haplogroups, archaeological cultures, and language families

distribution of E-M35 lineages. Until now, otherauthors in this area (such as Battaglia et al., 2008; Hennet al., 2008; Hassan et al., 2008) have primarily builtupon this basis, with relatively small adjustments.

The map shown in is based upon Cruciani et al.(2004, 2007), and was made by the present author forthe E-M35 article on the English Wikipedia. It addssome recent information from articles by Hassan et al.(2008, concerning E-V32 in Sudan) and Henn et al.(2008, concerning M293).

The current known phylogenetic structure of thishaplogroup, also largely based upon the Cruciani et al.articles, can be seen in an up-to-date form on the ISOGGY Haplogroup Tree, Haplogroup E page (ISOGG,

2009). Below, in the tree has been simplifiedand some initial remarks have been added concerningthe geographic distribution.

For each clade, the “phylogenetic nomenclature” whichcan change with each new discovery of a UEP, or clade-defining mutation, can be replaced with a simpler“mutational nomenclature.” For example, E1b1b1 is aname which describes the position in the “family tree”of the branch defined by M35.

Apart from the following presentation of theHaplogroup E phylogeny, mutational nomenclature willbe used in this article, except in some quotations, wherethe current equivalent terminology will be noted insquare parentheses.

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E1b1b M215E1b1b* Rare, but some found in Ethiopia (Cruciani et al., 2004) and Yemen (Cadenas et al.,

2007).E1b1b1 M35 The dominant subgroup of E-M215 (Cruciani et al., 2004).

E1b1b1* Since the discovery of M293 (below) this paraclade appears to be mostcommon in the Horn of Africa (Semino et al., 2004, Henn et al., 2008).

E1b1b1a M78 Widespread from Egyptian “hub” (Cruciani et al., 2007; Battaglia et al.2008). See the map in Figure 2.

E1b1b1a* Rare, but found in small amounts over a wide area (Cruciani et al.,2007, Battaglia et al., 2008).

E1b1b1a1 V12E1b1b1a1* Widespread from Egyptian “hub” (Cruciani et al.., 2007).E1b1b1a1a M224 Rare (Underhill et al., 2001; Cruciani et al.,, 2004,

2006; but see also Onofri et al., 2006)E1b1b1a1b V32 Horn of Africa (Cruciani et al., 2004, 2006, 2007;

Sanchez et al., 2005)E1b1b1a2 V13, V36 Europe. Most common in parts of the Balkans and Italy,

found throughout Europe, but possibly has a Near Eastern origin(Cruciani et al., 2004, 2006, 2007, Battaglia et al., 2008)

E1b1b1a3 V22 Widespread from Egyptian “hub” (Cruciani et al., 2007,Hassan et al., 2008).

E1b1b1a4 V65 Maghreb, for example Libya, Tunisia, Algeria (Cruciani,2004, 2006, 2007)

E1b1b1a5 M521 Two found in Greece (Battaglia et al. 2008)E1b1b1b M81 Maghreb, especially Western Sahara, Morocco and Algeria (Arredi et al.,

2004, Cruciani et al. 2004, Luis et al. 2004, Semino et al. 2004, Bosch et al.2001)

E1b1b1c M123 Strikingly scattered: Turkey, Oman, Ethiopia, Northern Portugal,Kabyle, Jordan, Jewish populations, etc. Probably originated in Levant or Egypt

Cruciani et al. 2004, Flores et al. 2005, Cadenas et al. 2007)E1b1b1c* Rare (Cruciani et al. 2004, Flores et al. 2005, Cadenas et al. 2007), but

found in Northern Portugal (Flores et al. 2004, Gonçalves et al. 2005).E1b1b1c1 M34 Dominant in E-M123

E1b1b1d M281 Horn of Africa (Semino et al. 2004)E1b1b1e V6 Horn of Africa (Cruciani et al. 2004)E1b1b1f P72 (Karafet et al. 2008)E1b1b1g M293 Scattered in Eastern and Southern Africa (Henn et al. 2008)

As per convention:

1. An asterisk is used to denote the existence ofindividuals who have the defining mutation of aclade, but none of the mutations for any of itscurrently known sub-clades (For example,

is the same as and wouldindicate a person who has mutation M35, but

M78, M81, M123, M281, V6, P72, orM293).

2. Where such a lineage is not tested for allpossible sub-clades “x” is used to note which

ones have been tested and excluded. Forexample “ ” meansthat a person has been tested positive for M35,but was negative for M78, M81, and M123, themost commonly tested sub-clades.

As shall be shown, there are obvious reasons forconsidering whether Y Haplogroup E-M35 malelineages may have been present amongst peoples whospread the earliest Afroasiatic languages as well as the


earliest technologies associated with farming andpastoralism in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Thishas also been noted in DNA surveys of the last decade.Initially, what was noted was a seeming link to theEuropean Neolithic.

Semino et al. (2000) proposed that in Europe,haplogroup “Eu4” or “Ht-4”, equivalent to E-M35,represented “the male contribution of a demic diffusionof farmers from the Middle East to Europe."

King and Underhill (2002) went further and showed anassociation between the distribution of these E-M35lineages and the distribution of findings of Neolithicpainted pottery and figurines, again focussing ondiffusion from the Middle East into South-easternEurope.

Underhill (2002) went still further, mentioning thepotential relevance not only of the Middle-eastern linkto Europe that this clade showed, but also the clade’slinks to Africa:

Arredi et al. (2004) focussed on the Maghreb region ofMediterranean Northern Africa, seeing a parallel towhat had already been observed for Europe, andsimilarly proposing that “Y-chromosomal geneticstructure observed in North Africa is mainly the resultof an expansion of early food-producing societies.”These authors also observed that “this expansion couldhave involved people speaking a proto–Afro-Asiaticlanguage. These people could have carried, amongothers, the E3b [E-M35] and J lineages, after which theM81 mutation arose within North Africa and expandedalong with the Neolithic population into anenvironment containing few humans.” They also notedthe following options, which correspond to questions weshall discuss below:

Ehret et al. (2004) in a short letter to , perhapsrepresents the first published remark associating E-M35with the of Afroasiatic languages andNeolithic technologies, a subject this article intends to

address in more detail. They argued for a specificinterpretation that we’ll discuss in more detail:

The counter response by Bellwood (2004) was brief onthis point: “The genetics papers quoted by Ehret et al.do not settle the matter. The Y chromosome evidenceappears to signal complex two-way population move-ments, with very uncertain chronologies.” Bellwood’sobservation is not incorrect, but there is much more tobe said about the subject, as we shall seek to show in thisarticle.

Keita (one of the co-authors of the Ehret et al. letter) andBoyce (2005) discussed E-M35 in this context in a littlemore detail:

With the possible exception of the last two citations,which touch on arguments that will be discussed morebelow, these comments were not detailed. They wroteof E-M35 as a promising subject for future discussionregarding Neolithic technology or Afroasiatic languages,but did not go far into exploring the possibilities. Weshall see that, while proposing ancient links between Yhaplogroups, languages, and archaeology in this case isvery reasonable, “the devil is in the details."

It should be noted that the farming “revolution,” whileit was indeed of massive importance to humanity,happened over thousands of years, and Afroasiatic is avery old language group. So given the very large timeranges, many possible scenarios need to be considered.

Importantly, we also wish to try to go beyond assertingthat E-M35 and Afroasiatic have similar modern

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regional distributions. Therefore, this article shall alsoexamine what is known of the larger phylogenetic(family tree) structure within which E-M35 is only onebranching, as we must if we are to consider carefullyhow much genetics can add to debates in linguistics andarchaeology.

Afroasiatic is one of the world’s largest language groups,including the liturgical languages Arabic, Hebrew,Ge’ez, Coptic, and Aramaic, as well as such well-knownlanguages as Berber, Ancient Egyptian, Hausa, Oromo,and Somali. It is also particularly old, with its earliestbranchings so early that they are upon the limits of whatcan uncontroversially be identified as a single languagefamily. The geographic distribution of the Afroasiaticlanguage family is shown in .

It should be mentioned that a range of names are usedin the literature for the Afroasiatic language group, oftenintended to emphasize particular points of view, whichcan be quite important when it comes to this particularlanguage group. Commonly used alternative terms are“ (now sometimes considered to haveracist connotations, and therefore out of use in recentliterature), the collapsed form “ ; and“ , a name chosen to de-emphasize Asia, andmake it more clear that the group is mainly found inAfrica.

The academic situation in the linguistics field is morecomplex than in population genetics – with moreauthors having debated over a longer time, and a longerrecord of trying to integrate findings with those ofarchaeology. There is more controversy, and morediversity of opinion. The healthy debate is sometimesperhaps supplemented with the strong feelings involvedwith both the religious and supposed racial dividesspanned by this ancient language group.2

Linguists dealing with very old language groups mustoften work with very incomplete and uncertaininformation. Linguists dealing with modern dialectsmust constantly deal with the complexities caused byloanwords and “ ” (groups ofneighbouring languages which borrow more than justwords from each other). The human genome also resultsfrom complex mixing, but linguists do not have thebenefit of anything equivalent to the rare geneticmutations known as UEPs which are very useful indefining family trees with a high degree of security, andthey also do not have the equivalent of non-recombiningY-chromosome DNA, and mitochondrial DNA, parts ofthe genome which are passed unmixed to each newgeneration, allowing their phylogenies to be studied inisolation.

As a result therefore, there is no unanimous phylogenetictree for Afroasiatic languages. So we shall only namethe main distinct branches. These are:

This language family is native to theMaghreb, an area of North Africa centred aroundMorocco, Algeria and Tunisia, but also includingLibya, Western Sahara and Mauretania, as well asparts of Mali, Niger, and Egypt. Berber languageswere dominant in this enormous region beforeArabic arrived with the spread of Islamiccivilization.

. Originally Middle Eastern, but now astrong presence in Africa because of the afore-mentioned spread of Arabic. In the Fertile CrescentArabic largely replaced various forms of anotherSemitic language, Aramaic, which had in turnreplaced other Semitic languages, such as Hebrew.This pattern of closely related Semitic languagesreplacing each other in the area goes back at least asfar as Akkadian, luckily known to at least someextent from the ancient written records of thisregion. An ancient branch known as South Semiticis also present in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and thisbranch has also historically been present in southernparts of the Arabian Peninsula.

2 Followers of cultural debates as they appear in the popular press willbe interested to see Martin Bernal’s in the references forthis article, but this particular field is one where it is difficult to avoidsome level of controversy, and Bernal’s opinions in this subject areunsusual, but not particularly controversial.


A modern form of ancient Egyptianbarely survives in the form of the Coptic liturgicallanguage of Egypt’s native branch of OrthodoxChristianity. But in this case we once again have thebenefit of very early written records.

The above three were once very widespread and are veryclearly defined language groups. They are generallygrouped together as a northern branch. There is farmore disagreement concerning the diverse southernAfroasiatic languages, the study of which is limited tomodern times and modern dialects:

. A language family including Hausa, isspoken in several countries around Lake Chad, tothe south of the Sahara. This is a linguisticallydiverse and dynamic area. Many non Afroasiaticlanguages are also found there, but for exampleHausa has become a second language for manypeople in this region.

. Spoken mainly in Sudan, but also Egypt andEritrea, between the Nile and Red Sea. Thislanguage is often said to be a branch of Cushitic.

. A major language group of the Horn ofAfrica and Northern Kenya, including Oromo andSomali.

. A smaller language family sometimesthought to be related to Cushitic, and again foundin the area of the Horn of Africa, scattered in areassuch as the Omo river valley in the South West ofEthiopia.

For this article, we’ll try to define the agreements anddisagreements at the same time as we also begin makingmultidisciplinary comparisons, from the perspective ofan interest in Y chromosomal lineages (patrilineages),especially E-M35.

There are several relatively uncontroversial proposalsconcerning the ancient movements of Afroasiaticlanguages, each of which we can immediately compareto Haplogroup E-M35 and its sub-clades in populationgenetics:

Both E-M35 male lineages on the one hand, andAfroasiatic languages on the other, are seen byspecialists in the two respective fields as havingmoved pre-historically within what Cruciani et al.(2007) refer to as a “bi-directional corridor” alongthe Nile and/or the western coast of the Red Sea,

from the Sinai and Mediterranean, to the Horn ofAfrica.

Also in both fields, the population who lived in this“corridor” has obvious ancient connections to aNear Eastern ( ) corridor spreading intothe Fertile Crescent, where such clades as E-V13and E-M34 may have their origins (Middle EasternSemitic speaking populations typically also have asmaller presence of E-M35 Eurasian lineages thanmost African populations of Afroasiatic speakers,with the apparent exception of Chadic. See below).

There is also in both cases an obvious connection tothe West of the Nile, in the direction of the Saharaand along the southern Mediterranean, in the

. The people there are strongly associatedwith the distinct E-M81 and E-V65 sub-clades ofE-M35, and the Berber branch of Afroasiaticlanguages.

In both population genetics and linguistics, theLevant branch (re-)entered Africa in historicalperiods: both in Egypt, which is now Arabicspeaking, but was once home to the Egyptianlanguage; and Ethiopia, where Semitic (SouthernSemitic) languages now dominate in some areaswhich are believed to have once been Cushiticspeaking. Indeed there must have been much backand forth movement at these two points of contactbetween Africa and Asia.

In both fields there are signs of another scatteredbranch to the south, at least as far south asTanzania, which has apparently been mostly over-run by later language expansions: both the Bantuexpansion (Phillipson, 2002) and the expansion ofNilo-Saharan pastoralist populations southwardsinto the area (Ehret, 2002b). In the case oflanguages, these southern remnants are grouped inthe so-called Southern Cushitic group. In the caseof E-M35 lineages, the remnants that can be seentoday are in the form of the distinct E-M293 sub-clade, defined by Henn et al. (2008).

Of course, when we find such similar patterns in bothlanguages and Y lineages, this can give us at least someconfidence that the same population movements causedboth patterns. However it is important to be cautious.For this region of the world, with only a few possiblemigration routes avoiding the Red Sea and Sahara, thechances are high that similar migrations have happenedmany times.

With this in mind, it is proposed that we may at leastassume a strong likelihood that E-M35 male lineageswere involved in at least many of the migrations andcultural transmissions which caused the present and

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historical distributions of the Afroasiatic languages.From this relatively safe starting point, we cantentatively start to explore some of the controversies inthe field from a Y chromosome perspective.

Apart from the shared linguistic and genetic patternsabove, it is also striking that both the leading geneticsresearchers of E-M35 (Cruciani et al., 2002, 2004), andthe majority of linguists writing about Afroasiaticpropose the Horn of Africa as a homeland for thesubject of their discussion. What is even more strikingis that in both cases the key argument is that the higherdiversity (of genetic haplotypes or languages) found inthe Horn of Africa indicates an older presence.

In both linguistics and genetics however, there is aninherent weakness in relying too much upon theargument that the modern area with most diversity mustbe a homeland. This cause for doubt applies equally inboth fields, and in both fields it needs to be kept in mind.

Deceptively high relative diversity. This can comeabout if a region is relatively more clannish anddivided, something which often happens in highlandterrains, populations centred around oases, or if aregion is made up of immigrants from manyregions, which could for example happen if therewere large political, technological or climaticdisturbances happening in neighbouring regions.

Deceptively low relative diversity. This can comeabout for the opposite reasons. For example in anextreme case when one small isolated communityexpands rapidly, perhaps because of new foodresources being discovered, perhaps throughtechnological advance and/or climate change, some(or even maybe just one) of the foundingpatrilineages of that original small community cancome to dominate simply through chance or “drift."

There are obvious reasons to believe that both of thesemisleading effects may apply in this very ancient regionof human migration, Northern Africa and the MiddleEast. Two of the most obvious examples ofimmigrations for example are the above-mentionedrelatively recent entries of Semitic languages andhaplotypes from across the Red Sea into Ethiopia, andover the Sinai into Egypt. These specific cases are ofcourse obvious enough to identify. But there could havebeen other such effects, complicating modern attemptsto reconstruct ancient migrations:

The Nile area is one of the world’s greatest humanmigration corridors, that has seen peoples moved byempires, both local and foreign, and before there

were empires, by the spread of cultures with newtechnologies, again both local and foreign. So,Egypt’s genetic diversity must have been pushed andpulled. It is a challenge of any explanation to try todiscriminate between the different possible causes ofits genetic diversity.3

Much of the Horn of Africa is a highland area withstriking ethnic diversity even today, and where thegeography plays an obvious role in maintaining thatdiversity.

Apart from the obvious likelihood of migrationsthough Egypt, ancient movements of people fromthe Nile region, and indeed other surroundingregions, to the Horn of Africa are also very likely,and are indeed part of the standard theory forCruciani et al. (See for example V12 in the mapabove, a lineage which dominates Somalia, but isthought to have originated in or near Egypt).

The Nile area is arid, with fertile areas sometimesscattered around at great distances from each other.So in this region there must have been many pocketsof population who were isolated during longperiods. Isolated areas with small populations aremore susceptible to having decreases in geneticdiversity because of “genetic drift.”

The whole area has been subject to largefluctuations in climate, with extreme dry periodsinterspersed with much greener periods. Inparticular, the Sahara runs along the Western sideof the entire long “bi-directional corridor” underdiscussion, and the Sahara is known to haveoccasionally had a much higher capacity forsupporting human cultures during several phases ofpre-history (See e.g. Barker, 2000, F Hassan, 2000).Climate in this large region must have inevitably“pushed” and “pulled” populations in and out ofthe Sahara, as well as the Nile, the Maghreb, theRed Sea coast region, the Lake Chad region, and theLevant–the exact areas where we find E-M35lineages and Afroasiatic languages today. Becauseall languages and genetic populations being studiedtoday live during the present dry period in theSahara, the Sahara’s original diversity is impossibleto judge based upon these modern populationsalone.

It will of course give an unparsimonious andimpression whenever any researcher feels moved topropose that the Sahara, a place whose ancientpopulation we can hardly know about, is the originalhome to later cultures, languages and genetic lineages.3 ”The complexity of the E-M35 fraction in Egypt may have beenenhanced by several episodes of backflow, beginning with the intro-duction of agriculture into Africa, and, later, various historical events,such as the Greek, Roman, and Arab occupations” (Luis et al. 2004).


Nevertheless this is always a possibility that can not beignored, given what we know of the prehistoric climateand archaeology of the area. For the time being at least,archaeology is the main field of research that has anyconcrete evidence at all to offer concerning thispossibility.

These concerns force us to look for any availablecomplementary sources of information with which wecan cross-reference and gain perspective. Incomparative linguistics as in population genetics, thechance to study an old population, either because ofwritten language, or a well-preserved DNA sample, isunfortunately rare. Researchers must therefore look toarchaeology. In order to compare to archaeologythough, we first need to determine approximately howlong ago the ancestors of these modern languages andhaplogroups began dispersing.

While dating techniques in population genetics are farfrom uncontroversial, Cruciani et al. (2007) do providea widely accepted estimation for the time at whichE-M35 started spreading, at approximately 22,000years ago (20.9-23.9 ky).

Glottochronology, the attempt to develop mathematicalmethods of calculating the age of languages, isnotoriously controversial, but in the case of Afroasiatic,researchers are blessed with some of the oldest writtenrecords known. Both Egyptian and Akkadian, the oldestattested Semitic language, were already in Egypt andMesopotamia respectively in the 3rd millennium BCE.Furthermore, many linguists believe that Egyptian andSemitic are in the same Northern sub-branch ofAfroasiatic (along with Berber), although even whenthey first appear they are very distinct (e.g. Blench,2006). This in turn means that they shared a commonancestor a long time before they first appear, and thatthis common ancestor was a long time after the commonancestor of all Afroasiatic languages. For this reason itis not controversial to propose that Afroasiatic may haveeven begun dispersing in the period 7,000-10,000 yearsago, which brings us to the period of the Natufianculture in the Levant, a culture which preceded the firstNeolithic farming technologies in the Middle East.

With the above-mentioned need for archaeologicalperspectives in mind, it is very notable that mostarchaeologists believe that in this part of the world,critical Neolithic-associated technologies such asfarming and goat or sheep herding, originated not inAfrica, but across the Sinai in the Levant and FertileCrescent, and were distributed from there to Africa.This however leaves open the possibility that theNatufian material technologies which apparently led tothe Neolithic in the Levant had “African Roots” or even

African contemporary equivalents and “cousins." Thisis a common but disputed suggestion, as we shall discussfurther below, but unfortunately the archaeology ofAfrica has not yet been intense enough to allow the sortsof discussion which are possible for Europe, and theMiddle East (Barker, 2002; Bellwood, 2005, p.97).

Linguistics and archaeology have a track record of atleast some multi-disciplinary debate between the twofields, and there is therefore a body of literature whichcovers their joint efforts and disputes. As it happens,archaeologists tend to try to explain languages in termsof the material cultures they study, the most obvious onebeing the Neolithic technology “package.” Linguiststend to approach from another direction, comparingreconstructed vocabularies (concerning things likeplants, animals, tools, traditions etc) to archaeologicalevidence. This is a useful approach to try to squeezemore conclusions out of the little evidence available.

From this material we can summarize two broad optionsmost prominently proposed by linguists concerningAfroasiatic, as championed by the linguists who havemost addressed themselves to the archaeologicalquestion:

1. Alexander Militarev (2002, 2005) argues thatAfroasiatic did not disperse from Africa, but ratherthe Levant. This is a minority position amongstlinguists. He would equate proto-Afroasiatic withthe pre-Neolithic Natufian culture, making itapproximately 10,000 years old, and he wouldassociate its expansion with the later spread offarming technology to Africa.

One distinctive aspect of this theory for linguists isthe argument that Militarev sees evidence for a veryancient linguistic connection between Afroasiatic( in his work, following Diakonoff) andsome languages of Eurasia, for example in theCaucasus. Militarev works in the linguistictradition of trying to find the faint signs of languageconnections going back before the recognizedlanguage families, to an ancient proposed languagereferred to as “Nostratic.” This approach iscontroversial in linguistics because the seeminglinks which can be found between differentlanguage groups in this way are often so faint thatmany alternative theories can be found to fit thereconstructions. Furthermore, Martin Bernal(1987) for example apparently accepts thisNostratic connection, but explains it as a languagedispersed from Africa, and similarly Keita (2005)proposes that Afroasiatic and Nostratic may besibling language groups. Other linguists,apparently less convinced about Nostratic, are morewilling to consider connections between Afroasiaticand Elamite, in ancient Persia, and even Dravidian,

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in the Indian sub-continent (e.g. Blench, 2006).Most generally, even if there is strong evidencelinking Afroasiatic to Asian languages, why shouldthe very ancient implied language “super family”not have dispersed from Africa to Asia, rather thanthe other way around?

Perhaps more importantly, Militarev (2005) alsoclaims that Afroasiatic animal and plant wordsimply that the language originated in the Levant. Inthe archaeological field, Militarev finds favour withauthors like Peter Bellwood (Diamond andBellwood, 2003; Bellwood, 2004, 2005) who, in thetradition of Colin Renfrew, see a link betweenmodern languages and the spread of Neolithic earlyfarming and pottery technologies. This is the so-called “farming/language dispersal hypothesis”(Bellwood and Renfrew, 2005 eds).4

2. Christopher Ehret similarly equates an earlyAfroasiatic ( in his work) language with theNatufian culture studied by archaeology, but hebelieves that this was a proto-Semitic branch of thelanguage family, and that Afroasiatic as a whole hadalready been in existence long before the Natufian,at least as far back as 15,000 years ago (seeMilitarev, 2005 for his perspective on these ideas).

In this scenario, Afroasiatic originates in (or near)the Horn of Africa, and was the carrier of a new andmore intensive use of plant foods found in the wild,eventually including grass seeds. This way of lifewas an essential prior step to the Natufian, and inturn to true farming. Pastoralism, a minorityproposes, may also have begun very early inNorthern Africa, in what is now the Sahara (e.g.Barker, 2002). In terms of archaeological culturesEhret has a clear proposal, apparently receivingsupport in comments published by Bar-Yosef (1987)and Keita and Boyce (2005): he believes theNatufian comes out of a mixing of the Mushabianculture, of the Negev and Sinai, with the relatedKebaran culture, both of which preceded theNatufian in the Levant (Ehret, 2002, p.38). Thatthe Mashubian blended with the Kebaran, and thatthe Natufian is descended from this mixture, is notparticularly controversial, but it is not unanimouslyagreed upon within archaeology that either theNatufian or the Mashubian cultures are bestexplained as being wholly or partly from Africa asEhret proposes. This is the theory presented in, forexample, Bar-Yosef (1987) based upon lithictechnologies.5 Bar-Yosef (personal communication)

4 See Barker (2002): “A Near Eastern origin obviously chimes bestwith the archaeological model of Neolithic demic diffusion from theNear East into North Africa.”5 In particular, Bar-Yosef mentions the microburin technique and“microlithic forms such as arched backed bladelets and La Mouillahpoints”. See Barker (2002): “Though linguistic scholars debatewhether the language originated in North Africa or the Levant, we

also believes that evidence for the early introductionof the Sycamore Fig, into the Levant around thetime of the Natufian gives additional strength to thistheory.6

Coming to linguistic evidence, Ehret points out thatMilitarev’s reconstructed proto-Afroasiatic containsno indisputable common vocabulary for farmingitself, while the major branches do. He believes thatthis shows that farming originated after Afroasiaticstarted to disperse from its original homeland.

So the linguistics literature raises a range of possibilitiesabout the connections of Afroasiatic to the earlyNeolithic archaeological cultures. All versions of themobviously allow room for at least some branches ofAfroasiatic to have played a role in the spread of the veryfirst farming technologies in the Neolithic of both theLevant and Africa. In the Ehret scenario, Afroasiaticwas already old when a branch of it entered the Levant,along with people who helped trigger the slow changeswhich led to the Middle Eastern Neolithic. Militarevmakes Afroasiatic younger, but still significantly olderthan Neolithic technology.

What other scenarios might be worth considering, ifany, apart from the two most commonly cited categoriesabove? The majority of linguists accept an Africanorigin for Afroasiatic, but Militarev and Ehret bothbelieve in a relatively old age for Afroasiatic. See, forexample, Fakri Hassan (2002) for a cautious summaryof the evidence. If we were to doubt this great agepostulated by authors like Militarev and Ehret, butaccept that proto-Afroasiatic was both pre-agricultural,and African, then the implication would be thatAfroasiatic was a hitchhiker that entered very effectivelyinto the whole complex of peoples involved in whatbecame the Neolithic revolution and then proceeded tospread with them, especially in Africa, but also to asignificant extent in parts of the Middle East. Is this arealistic scenario? We shall consider below whatgenetics could add to such a consideration.

At first sight, the relatively young field of populationgenetics seems to offer only limited assistance.

can at least point to the similarities in the respective archaeologicalrecords of the Natufian culture of the Levant and of contemporaryforagers in coastal North Africa across the late Pleistocene and earlyHolocene boundary.”6 Bones of the Egyptian fruit bat, , which eatsfigs, are found in the Levant only from the Natufian onwards. TheSycamore Fig ( ) appears to have been first introducedto the Nile region from its native habitat much further south in Africa.The Egyptian and Levantine versions of this plant are parthenocarpic,requiring the help of man to reproduce. The closest place where a wildwasp helps fertilize these figs is in Sudan. Stored parthenocarpic figremains ( have been found in Gilgal I, an early Neolithicvillage, located in the Lower Jordan Valley, and dating to 11400 to11200 years ago (Kislev et al., 2006).


However, turning to the latest chronology of E-M35presented in Cruciani et al. (2004, 2007) the above twotheories can both be made to fit with varying degrees ofsuccess. The following scenarios are attempts to showmultidisciplinary correspondences by the present author.

Scenario 1. Very early Afroasiatic, originating in Africa

Using Ehret’s scenario, E-M35 and Afroasiatic musthave been together from their first dispersals out of thegeneral area of the Horn of Africa. Branches ofAfroasiatic fit very well with the branching in E-M35:

1. A large number of E-M35 lineages came north toEgypt, which is where E-M78, for example, isthought to have come into existence. The Nile itselfwas not always highly populated, depending uponthe climate in different eras. The changing rainfallmay have pushed and pulled populations towardsthe Sahara and Levant, and back again.

2. E-V65, for example, is a clade of E-M78 whichappears to be native to areas west of Egypt, in theMaghreb. E-M81 is a clade of E-M35 which ismore common than E-V65 in the Maghreb, butwith its centre of dispersal apparently further west,possibly having split off somewhat earlier from themain “bi-directional corridor” near the Nile.

3. E-M123, for example, is a clade of E-M35 whichprobably originated in the southern Levant, just tothe northeast of Egypt. Many branches of E-M78,from nearby northern Egypt are also present in theSemitic speaking populations of this region. Thatthe Levant is not dominated by E-M35 is notsurprising in this scenario, because it is generallyaccepted that the Natufian culture, while important,only contributed to the bigger changes going onaround the Fertile Crescent (Bar-Yosef, 2002), andthe Semitic languages may have remained isolated inthe Levant until not long after the written recordstarts in Mesopotamia (Zarins 1990).

Scenario 2. Early Afroasiatic, originating in Levant

Fitting Militarev’s scenario to the genetic evidencerequires more thought, showing how genetic evidencecan be very useful for narrowing down the likelyalternatives, and also helping show potential weak andstrong spots of theories in other disciplines. Because ofthe extremely strong links between Afroasiatic and E-M35 in such diverse areas as Morocco and Somalia, it isvery difficult to imagine any scenario where Afroasiaticand E-M35 did not disperse together from their earliestorigins, . Outside Africa, theconnection is less clear. Although E-M35 is common inparts of the Middle East and Mediterranean, no large

regional non-African population is truly dominated byE-M35 lineages, and hence even amongst the AfroasiaticSemitic speaking populations, such as modern Arabs,the levels of E-M35 found there, could reasonably beexplained by theories which require no major events ofthe types that archaeologists and linguists might easilytrack.

Here then is a scenario attempting to fit Militarev’sscheme to the genetic evidence:

1. E-M35 spread northwards from the Horn of Africa,or nearby, at the right time to be involved in manyphases of dispersion of new technologies inNorthern and Eastern Africa, certainly at leastincluding technologies which had crossed the Sinaifrom outside Africa. This implies that it wascertainly near the Sinai at an early date, close to theLevant. By the time true farming arrived in Egypt,for example, E-M35 is likely to have been presentthere for a long time already. Cruciani et al. (2007)propose that its sub-clade E-M78 was foundedsomewhere near Egypt, very roughly 10,000 -20,000 years ago.

2. Afroasiatic languages could conceivably have begunto disperse much later than E-M35, and from adifferent homeland, only later entering into theE-M35 areas of Africa. Such a language expansionwould not necessarily require a true migration ofsignificant proportions of the population (“demicdiffusion”) which would perhaps involve thereplacement of E-M35 male lines. Ethnic groupsand regions can take up new languages more easilythan they take up whole new sets of male lines.

3. In the simplest such scenario then, Afroasiaticlanguages first entered Africa in a region with a highE-M35 population, then integrated with thatpopulation, before dispersing further. In particular,Afroasiatic languages in Africa could have comefrom the Levant into Egypt, and then started todisperse together further with E-M35 lineages,including E-M78 lineages, from this starting point,more-or-less independently of Semitic languagesdispersing outside Africa.

Does this fit with Militarev’s own ideas? Militarevwrites (Militarev, 2002, p. 135) that the “Proto-Afrasianlanguage, on the verge of a split into daughterlanguages,” meaning, in his scenario, into “Cushitic,Omotic, Egyptian, Semitic and Chadic-Berber”, “shouldbe roughly dated to the ninth millennium BC.” E-M35was almost certainly present in Egypt by this period,with perhaps a smaller presence in the Levant already.This is shown not only by looking at the data for E-M78mentioned above, but also because the E-V12 sub-cladeof E-M78 is said by Cruciani et al. (2007) to have come

46

into existence about 12,500-15,200 years ago in theEgyptian area, and only then moved south to become avery prevalent clade in the Horn of Africa.

In this Militarev-inspired scenario above, the linkbetween Afroasiatic and E-M35 needs a more complexexplanation than in the Ehret scenario.

Unless we make ad hoc assumptions that technologycould only move in one direction after a certain date,E-M35 might have left Africa and entered the Levantduring many periods, before, during or after theNatufian. This, however, raises a question again ofwhether Afroasiatic might be significantly younger thanin the proposals of Militarev. For example Juris Zarins(1990) has proposed that Semitic languages may havetheir genesis in early pastoralist groups neighbouring theFertile Crescent farmers. The Harifian culture, a Negevrelative of the Natufian, is a likely contributor to thispastoralist culture, and according to Ehret’s proposals arecipient of African technology and culture. MightAfroasiatic languages, and indeed E-M35, haveremained solely in Africa until this relatively late period?

Scenario 3. More recent Afroasiatic, originating inAfrica.

As a final scenario, we compare the genetic evidence toa synthesis intended to represent the possibility thatAfroasiatic (and Semitic) are younger than they are inthe well-known proposals of Ehret and Militarev. Thisseems necessary for completeness, given that, asmentioned above, many linguists appear uncomfortablewith such deep chronologies.

1. If the starting point for Afroasiatic would beanywhere within the corridor stretching from theNile Delta to the Horn of Africa, and if its dispersalstarted well into the Holocene (more recently thanin the scenarios of Ehret and Militarev), then E-M35is almost certain to have been present in that “proto-Afroasiatic” population.

2. While E-M123 has the appearance of being a sub-clade of E-M35 that may have originated in theLevant quite early, it is still basically true that theE-M35 diversity found in the Levant today is abranch of the same diversity found in Egypt, whichalso has a high E-M123 diversity (Luis et al., 2004).

3. This would make Afroasiatic and probably alsoE-M35, both representatives of the Africancontribution to the full development of theNeolithic, but not necessarily playing any specialearly role in the pre-Neolithic.

Examining how well these scenarios work in matchinglinguistic, archaeological and genetic patterns, some

weaknesses seem to appear which will require moredetailed discussion below. For example:

1. While it allows for the entry of E-M35 into theLevant, Scenario 2, based upon Militarev, certainlydoes not explain it. It requires us to say thatAfroasiatic languages and E-M35 moved in oppositedirections between the continents.

2. A problem seems to arise when we come to look atthe genetic distinctness of the population of theMaghreb. In Scenario 2, and Scenario 3 the ancestorof the Berber languages came from the East (Nile orLevant), in or after the Neolithic. The area hascertainly been influenced by the Nile and Levant aswe know from more recent millennia, but the geneticimpact, while clear, is overwhelmed by a verydominant but also very E-M35 population,with E-M81 in particular showing no signs ofHolocene common ancestry with other modern E-M35 subclades. This is not anproblem, but it does force us to invoke causes whichare difficult to confirm or deny. For example:

Despite its large impact, the founding populationthat brought E-M35 lineages might have beenestablished long before Afroasiatic languagesarrived, with the Afroasiatic in this particularregion bringing a new language, and possibly newtechnologies, but not the particular E-M81 lineagethat has become so prevalent in the area.

A founding population may have brought E-M35lineages and Berber languages together but thispopulation may have been relatively small, giventhe isolation of the area, meaning that “foundereffects” might make the population there appearmore genetically independent than it is from theNile.

So whether we should favour one of the above scenariosdepends partly upon how genetically diverse and old theMaghreb population of today seems to be. This shall bediscussed below.

We can already observe that population genetics helpsus see the potential weak and strong points of theories,even if only by showing which assumptions are requiredto fit with the current state of information. It alsopresents us with ideas about what types of futureevidence might favour those scenarios. In a difficultfield such as studying ancient populations, any singletype of evidence can only normally work in conjunctionwith other sources of information.

In the above we have relied upon the assertion thatE-M35 originated in Africa, far from the Levant, as is


posited by Cruciani et al. (2007) and all other peer-reviewed population genetics studies. The oldestgeographical location of the E-M35 lineage must be ofinterest to linguists and archaeologists. This is because,as can be seen above, linguists and archaeologists arevery interested in debating precisely the question of howimportant Africans were in developing and dispersingthe technologies which led to the Middle EasternNeolithic, the African Neolithic, and the Afroasiaticfamily of languages; and in time to one of humanity’s

greatest complexes of civilizations in Egypt, the FertileCrescent and surrounding areas.

We therefore now turn to deeper examination of thepart of the family tree of humanity’s male lines withinwhich E-M35 sits, in order to consider how clear theevidence is for African origins. First, we show thephylogeny for Haplogroup E from ISOGG (2009) again,this time to show E-M35 and its ancestral context, inorder to assist discussions about its apparent geographicorigins, along with those of its closest relatives.

E M40/SRY4064/SRY8299, M96, etc.E*E1 P147

E1*E1a M33, M132

E1a*E1a1 M44E1a2 P110

E1b P177E1b* -E1b1 DYS391p, P2/PN2, P179, P180, P181

E1b1*E1b1a DYS271/M2/SY81, M180/P88, P1/PN1, etc.E1b1b M215

E1b1b*E1b1b1 M35

E1b1b1*E1b1b1a M78

E1b1b1a*E1b1b1a1 V12

E1b1b1a1*E1b1b1a1a M224E1b1b1a1b V32

E1b1b1a2 V13, V36E1b1b1a3 V22E1b1b1a4 V65E1b1b1a5 M521

E1b1b1b M81E1b1b1c M123

E1b1b1c* -E1b1b1c1 M34

E1b1b1d M281E1b1b1e V6E1b1b1f P72E1b1b1g M293

E1b1c M329E1b2 P75

E2 M75, P68

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branches of E-M35 occur in Africa, and only afew are suggested to have originated just outsideAfrica in the Levant (E-V13 and E-M123, discussedin more detail below).

Furthermore, some branches of E-M35 arefound in the Horn of Africa, for example E-V6(Cruciani et al., 2004) and E-M281 (Semino et al.,2004).

Even more striking, one major clade of E-M35,E-M293 is apparently found only quite far to the

of the Horn of Africa (Henn et al., 2008),scattered southward throughout Eastern Africa andwell into Southern Africa.

There also seem to be other branches waiting to bediscovered in the Horn of Africa, reflected in therelatively high number of people in that region whoare E-M35*, positive for M35, but not positive forany of the defined sub-clades such as M78, M81,M123, M281, V6, M293 etc. With the discovery ofE-M293 in Southern and Eastern Africa, the Hornof Africa now appears to have by far the highestE-M35* concentration, as can be seen bycomparing Henn et al. (2008) to Semino et al.(2004) and Cruciani et al. (2004).7

The modern population of lineages known as E-M35has sometimes been referred to as E-M215. Twodefining mutations, M35 and M215 are almost alwaysfound in the Y chromosomes of the same men. HoweverCruciani et al. (2004) found 2 Amhara Ethiopians (outof 64) who were E-M215 positive and E-M35 negative,which in the mutational nomenclature makes them

. More recently, Cadenas et al. (2007) foundone more such individual out of 62 individuals tested inYemen, across the Red Sea from Ethiopia. Yemenitesand Amhara share a common history of speakinglanguages in the South Semitic language family.

E-M35, and E-M215, (essentially the same haplogroup)are part of the older E-P2 clade. There are othersurviving E-P2 male lines to be found in the modernworld.

, is also sometimes referred to as E-PN1 orE-P1. E-P1 and E-M35 dominate the modernpopulation of E-P2 lineages. This “sibling” clade toE-M35 is certainly African. It is a large and

7 But see Adams et al. (2008) concerning Asturias in Spain, where twoout of 20 people were tested and found to be “E-M35*” [E-M35(xM78, M81, M123)].

widespread clade associated with Western andCentral Africa and also with the spread of languagesand cultures from that area into Southern Africa, inthe Bantu expansion (see for example Underhill etal., 2001). Looking to Europe, Adams et al. (2008)found four E-M2 individuals out of 1140 peopletested in Iberia. These were all in the south:Mallorca, Valencia, and Southern Portugal. InSicily, Di Gaetano et al. (2008) found no Ehaplotypes apart from E-M35. In the Middle East,Semino et al.’s very large 2004 survey found two inIraq, out of 218 people tested there. Cadenas et al.(2007) also reports small numbers in the ArabianPeninsula.

is a much smaller sibling clade of E-M215and E-M2. Semino et al. (2004) found 2 EthiopianOromo, out of 78 tested, in a survey of >2400individuals from many places. Cadenas et al. (2007)found one E-M329 in Qatar, out of 72 people testedthere.

There must once have been more E-P2clades, neither E-M35 nor E-M2 nor E-M329, andindeed there still are some E-P2 lineages in existencewhich fall into none of these sub-clades, with tracesin Western Africa, and perhaps more importantly, arelatively significant amount in Ethiopia (Semino etal., 2004; Cruciani et al., 2004).

Karafet et al. (2008) confirmed that E-P75, originallyannounced in Hammer et al. (2003), is a sibling to E-P2.Both of these are sub-clades of E-P177. Butunfortunately no information seems to be available ineither paper concerning where E-P75 is from, or howcommon it is.

E-P177 is a sibling to E-M33/E-M132, according to thephylogeny in Karafet et al. (2008), Both are withinE-P147.

, is West African. It isfound throughout the Sahara, as far north as theMaghreb, but especially in the western areastowards the Atlantic. It is virtually absent outsideof this area. Semino et al. (2004) found by far thehighest concentration in Mali. Cruciani et al.(2002) found highest levels in the Fulbe and at Tali,both in Cameroon. Looking to Europe, Adams etal. (2008) found three individuals out of 1140people tested in Iberia. All were in NorthernPortugal, an area which shows relatively high levelsof haplogroups from Africa (Adams et al., 2009;Gonçalves et al., 2005; Flores et al., 2004; see


below). Cadenas et al. (2007) found none in theArabian Peninsula.

E-P177 and E-M33/M132 are together in the cladeE-P147, also known as E1, and their known surviving“cousin”, the sibling of E-P147, is E-M75, also knownas E2.

is sub-Saharan. Luis et al. (2004) shows highestlevels in Bantu speakers from Kenya. Semino et al.(2004) found highest levels in Burkina Faso andBantu speakers in South Africa. Cruciani et al.(2002) found highest levels in Burkina Faso(Rimaibe) and the Daba people of northernCameroon. Outside of Africa, this clade is veryrare. Cadenas et al. (2007) found 3 individuals outof 72 people tested in Qatar. Luis et al. (2004)found 2 people out of 121 tested in Oman.

In summary, when we look at the siblings and “cousins”of E-M35 in its “family tree” we see very little evidenceof origins to the north of the Sahara at all. The Horn ofAfrica seems to have had stronger prehistoric links withthe regions west of it, towards the Nile and the southernedge of the Sahara, than to the Levant. It appearspossible that it was only after E-M35 came into beingthat the E clade became involved in migrations both tothe north, to the south.

There also of course appears to be a history of constantbut small links with the southern extremities of theArabian peninsula, across the Red Sea to the East fromthe Horn of Africa, but these do not seem to be as largeas connections within Africa, and there is little evidencethat these lineages in the southern Arabian Peninsula arein any way parallel with other parts of the Middle East.

Could Semitic have spread across the Red Sea and fromthe southern Arabian peninsula to the North? Generallyspeaking, Semitic languages are thought to haveachieved their coverage over the Arabian peninsulastarting from the Levant in the north, and spreading tothe south. Furthermore, most linguists would acceptthat Semitic is part of a northern group withinAfroasiatic, most closely related to Egyptian and Berber.But Lionel Bender (1997), a leading expert on Ethiopianlanguages, proposed a scenario upon linguistic groundswherein Semitic languages originated in Ethiopia andcrossed the Red Sea. We can note that although thislinguistic theory would be in line with these veryparticular and unsurprising genetic links between theHorn of Africa and the Southern Arabian Peninsula, itdoes not correspond to much else in genetics orarchaeology, and there is no reason to invoke such atheory in order to explain genetic links between theHorn of Africa and nearby Southern Arabia. As far asthe present author is aware, there are no obvious signs,

at least not yet, that either material cultures or majorgenetic lineages moved from the Southern Arabianpeninsula to the North in prehistoric times, and also nosign of further movement onwards, for example toBerber speaking lands in Northwestern Africa. TheSouthern Arabian peninsula appears to be a geneticoutlier, combining lineages from both the Middle Eastand Africa. Future archaeological research in this regionmay change our perspective.

Concerning the first origins of E-M35, our examinationof the phylogeny of the E haplogroup draws ourattention towards the inhabited band along the southernedge of the Sahara desert. There, as shown in ,

we find the so called Sahel, and a Savannah “Parkland”which stretches parallel to and just to the south of theSahel. These long regions stretch from the Atlantic tothe Horn of Africa. Clearly E-M35’s family centersaround this band, with E-M35 representing the Easternor Nile end.

At this point we can refer back to linguistics, andstrikingly we find the same pattern. The map of Africanlanguages reproduced at the introduction of the presentarticle shows the African continent dominated by threelanguage groups. Apart from Afroasiatic, the other twogroups (Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo) can be stated

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without any controversy to be completely African, andto have dispersed from near the same large band alongthe southern Sahara.

While these three distinct language groups, apparentlyall from regions in or near the Sahel, do not have thesame Y haplogroup populations, all have highconcentrations of E haplotypes. Genetics is able toprove conclusively that they are related to each otherand to E-M35, as demonstrated above – showing uslinks further back in time than the study of languagescan.

So there are clear signs in two fields that the ancestors ofthe population living today in the area to the south ofthe Sahara, together with the Horn of Africa, formed anancient core from which cultures, languages and peoplethemselves dispersed further. Despite the enormous sizeof the area, because of the climate there, migrations andlong distance interactions appear to be common. TheFula (Fulbe, Fulani) people for example, are found fromthe Atlantic all the way to Darfur in Sudan. Indeed itappears likely that the centre of gravity of these peopleshas moved around over the millennia, with changingclimactic conditions.

Other types of evidence are generally felt to confirm thatthis region was a major source of human diversity. Inthe wet early Holocene period an “aquatic tradition”developed in the eastern Sahel and south-eastern Sahara,centred around the lakes, rivers and wetlands of thatperiod. This culture developed intensive resource useand sedentary habits, including the storage of wild grassseeds and the use of pottery. Christopher Ehretproposes indeed that wild grass collection had beenintroduced by proto-Afroasiatic speakers within thiscomplex, who he believes had already developed thistype of resource use to the East of the Nile. Whether thisbe true or not it seems very likely indeed that this culturenear modern Sudan played an important role in E-M35pre-history. The peoples of this successful culture seemto have ended this way of life and dispersed intoneighbouring areas due to the change in climacticconditions (Ehret, 2002a, 2002b).

While it seems very clear that genetics does show that amajor and ancient movement of people took place fromthe Horn of Africa (or in any case from somewhere tothe south of the Sahara) to the Semitic speaking areas, italso supplies evidence of at least some migration in theother direction, in the form of lineages within the largelyEurasian haplogroup F (which contains J, R, T etc).However, these haplogroups, which are not the subjectof the present article, are far less common in Africa thanother clades, and are normally interpreted as a result ofmore recent (post-Neolithic) “back migration” fromEurasia to Africa – for example during the expansions of

the Arabic speaking, Muslim religion and empire (Luiset al., 2004).8

We have so far focussed primarily upon the very oldestorigins of Haplogroup E-M35, the language familyAfroasiatic, and how they might relate to the pre-Neolithic cultures from the Levant and Nile. Now weneed to turn to the dispersals of the Neolithic itself, andthereafter. Many of the later regional variations of thelanguages, haplogroups and archaeological materialcultures which this subject potentially involves deservedetailed discussion in their own right. However for thecontext of this particular article, short summaries will begiven which will help demonstrate the potential forfurther more detailed multidisciplinary work.

We have shown that by the time of the Natufian, E-M35had dispersed at least as far as Egypt, which means itwas at least in contact with the Natufian culture acrossthe Sinai, possibly along the Mediterranean coast. Iteven seems very likely that both E-M35 and Afroasiaticlanguages were already in the Levant, and had comefrom Africa earlier.

There is little doubt about some aspects of whathappened next. With the development of farmingtechnologies both Afroasiatic languages and E-M35spread together from this Nile-delta/Levant “hub.” Inone direction, the Middle East, they developed as onepart of greater Fertile Crescent complex of cultureswhere Semitic languages only eventually attained theirlater prominence (Zarins 1990). In the other directionlay Africa, the homeland of E-M35, and probably alsoof Afroasiatic. Here too, a complex of successfulcultures was formed, merging with local cultures, someof which appear to have come from the Sahara. PeterBellwood (2005, p.101) writes:

8 Some aspects of the apparent Y-DNA evidence for “back migration”from Eurasia to Africa are discussed below concerning Chadic lan-guages.


In the Middle East E-M35 lineages are common anddiverse, but not dominant in many areas. MiddleEastern populations, like those in Egypt, have a complexmixture of Y lineages including many which are thoughtto be Eurasian in origin, such as the J, G, T and Rhaplogroup lineages. Only two E-M35 clades areidentified in the literature as probably having Levantineorigins, indeed the only two which are stated inpublished literature not to have originated in Africa -E-M123, and E-V13. In parallel, only one family ofAfroasiatic languages is non-African, Semitic. AlthoughSemitic is very dominant in this region today, this wasnot always the case.

It is striking that E-M123 and E-V13, thoughextrapolated to have Levantine origins, are very widelydispersed. This is however somewhat typical of MiddleEastern Y haplogroups, and that is interesting in itself.It appears that some Fertile Crescent farmers developedcolonizing cultures which spread rapidly north, throughAnatolia into Europe, and, from the Levant or Anatolia,it seems, west into the Mediterranean basin, colonizingCyprus very early–which provided “a clear and valuabletemplate for the subsequent diffusion of the Neolithicacross the rest of the Mediterranean Basin” at leastaccording to one author (Zeder, 2008, p.11600).

Can we say that in the Fertile Crescent itself there were“waves of dispersal” whereby either languages or Y-DNA were strongly linked to the spread of Neolithictechnology? Because Neolithic technology developed inthis area in a complex way, the metaphor of a waveseems inappropriate. E-M35 and Afroasiatic appear tohave been only parts of a bigger diversity within thisregion during the Neolithic, both apparently reflecting acontribution from the south-eastern corner of thecrescent, with links to Africa. The modern Y DNAshows the diversity of the Middle East more clearly thanthe modern linguistic situation, which has becomedominated by Arabic. The historical dominance ofSemitic languages in the Fertile Crescent appears to haveonly developed after the Neolithic had spreadthroughout the area, carried by pastoralists who wereneighbours to the first farmers (Zarins 1990).

Therefore if there was any radiating wave of Neolithiclanguage and/or genotype dispersal it must be in theareas outside the Fertile Cresecent.

E-M123 is not as common as E-M78 and E-M81, itsmajor sibling clades within E-M35. It is also moredifficult to associate with any particular region, beingfound in relatively high frequencies in such scatteredplaces as Oman, North-western Iberia, Turkey(Cinnio lu et al., 2004), Tizi-Ouzou in Berber-speakingcoastal Algeria (Arredi et al., 2004), and Semitic-speaking Ethiopia. Nevertheless a strong impression ofa Middle Eastern origin has been building up.

It was noted by Cruciani et al. (2004), Semino et al.(2004), and Luis et al. (2004) that E-M123 (mostlyequivalent to its dominant sub-clade E-M34) appears tobe a branch of E-M35 which split off early from theolder population through the “Levantine corridor” (Luiset al.). In frequency terms, relatively strong branchesappear in Oman and Ethiopia, but these appear to beyounger branches from the Levantine and Egyptianpopulations. Coffman-Levy (2005) noted the presenceof the clade in both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewishdata for example in Semino et al. (2004), indicating thatit might be an ancient Levantine lineage. More recentlycame the more striking information from Flores et al.(2005) that 14 out of 45 men tested in the Dead Sea areaof Jordan are M34 positive (31.1%). Flores et al.specifically chose this area for sampling because they feltthe population there was relatively genetically isolated,which can help show ancient genetic influences.

It therefore appears as if E-M123 represents a clade (orclades, for this is an ancient lineage with its ownidentified sub-clades) which dispersed within the FertileCrescent pre-historically. It’s dominant E-M34 sub-clade is strongly associated with populations withSemitic languages.

Far beyond the Fertile Crescent, E-M123 also appears tohave a small but significant and ancient Mediterraneandispersal. For example in Northwestern Iberia (Adamset al., 2009) and in some areas of Sicily (Di Gaetano etal., 2008) as well as in the Albanian speakingcommunity of Cosenza Province in Calabria (Semino etal., 2004). According to the data collected in Adams etal. (2009) the highest M34 levels in Iberia might be onthe islands of Minorca and Ibiza.

It is worth remarking, given that we are examining theusefulness of genetic data, that the Adams et al. paperwas widely reported in the popular press, based upon itsmajor theme and its title, which involved the followingclaims (p.732):

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While the headlines which appear after major DNAsurveys constantly place emphasis upon historicallyfamous populations such as Greeks, Romans,Phoenicians, Basques, Celts and Moors, the potential forseeing much older migrations in the data is arguably farmore powerful, because after the Neolithic, thepopulation increased relatively dramatically, meaningeven large movements of people since that time have hadless effect. This style of reporting is popular andpleasant, and geneticists writing in peer-reviewedarticles are careful to couch their conclusions in cautiouslanguage. But one negative result of the currentsituation, for example in this case, is that much moreinteresting results have been -emphasized, possiblydiscouraging readers from outside the field who mighthave had something to add. To quote Adams et al.further (p.733):

Note that the authors do not mention E-M123 in theabove passage, which is less discussed than G, K (or T)and J in the literature as a Middle Eastern marker, butthey did find many Middle Eastern looking lineages. Itis important to recall that in this present article we arelargely limiting analysis to E-M35, and that other cladescan and will substantially add to the picture only beingtouched upon here. The key observation however, isthat north-western Iberia shows a surprisingly high levelof Middle Eastern Y DNA, which confuses the picturepresented in Adams et al. (2008), and indeed brings itinto question. The authors note this but propose toseparate the two groups of non-Iberian Y lineages,North African lineages being from historical times andthe Middle Eastern ones being much older. However,this should raise the question of how they judged thiswithout making an decision. As the authors notethemselves:

In other words, the Maghrebin lineages are in the wrongpart of Iberia to be explained by the Islamic orPhoenician periods. Something much more interestingseems to underlie this pattern.

As it turns out, further examination of the data in thisand other studies shows that a diverse range ofsurprising pockets of Middle Eastern and North Africanlineages are found in the remote bays and valleys of theEast and North of Iberia. E-M123, as it happens, playsa very useful but largely unrecognized role in thispattern. It is useful to summarize some of the mostunusual haplotypes of this type, rarely found anywherein Europe, or in some cases, anywhere at all.

In a 568-person study in Iberia, Flores et al. (2004)found about 10% of Galicians were E-M34+ (as aremost people who are M123+). Perhaps morestrikingly, they also found two very rare cases ofE-M123* individuals. Both were in NorthernPortugal, out of 109 people tested there. E-M123*is rare in all places surveyed so far. It might be mostcommon in Northern Portugal. Isolated individualshave been found in Tunis (Arredi et al., 2004),Jordan (Flores et al., 2005), Central Asia (Underhillet al., 2000), and Bulgaria (Cruciani et al., 2004).

In a 553-person study of Portugal, Gonçalves et al.(2005) (another article which has a title mentioningBerber and Sephardim ancestry, this time focussedon Portugal) found E-M34 mainly in CentralPortugal (4 people out of 102 tested there) with onemore person found in the Açores. They also foundtwo more rare cases of E-M123* individuals inNorthern Portugal, out of 101 people, as well as 2in Madeira out of 129 people tested there. Galicia,on the other hand, shows up as an E-M34 enclave,with 2 out of 19 people tested (10.5%).

In a 292-person study of Galicia, Brion et al. (2004)found 4.11% E-M81 (12 people), 1 person whowas E-M123* and about 1% (3 people) who wereE-M34.

Adams et al (2009) found 9% E-M81 in Galicia (88people), much higher than the 2% in EasternAndalucía, for example (95 people). But they alsofound 10% of E-M35* in the Asturias (out of 20people). Such a level of E-M35* is rare outside ofthe Horn of Africa (see Cruciani et al., 2004, inconjunction with Henn et al., 2008 concerning theSouthern African population, which will bediscussed further below).


In Cruciani et al (2007) 4.44% out of 90 Asturianstested were from the haplogroup E-V22 and 6.25%of 16 French Basques were in E-V12*. These twosub-clades of E-M78 appear to come from Egypt,and are very rare in Europe outside of Southern Italy.

Perhaps most well known of all these surprisingenclaves, Cruciani et al. (2004) found that no lessthan about 40% of 56 male lines tested in the Pasvalley in mountainous Cantabria were M81+.

Capelli et al. (2009) confirms Cantabria as anIberian “hot spot” not only for E-M81, but alsoE-V65 (equivalent to the “beta cluster” of E-M78as per Cruciani et al, 2006) and J1, and once againconfirms far lower levels of these North Africanhaplotypes in the East of Iberia (Basques, Catalans).No E-V65 or J1-M267 was found in theirAndalusian sample.

Looking to other Y haplogroups with similar patterns,as Gonçalves et al. (2005) remark:

Concerning J lineages, another marker of EasternMediterranean origins, we can add from looking atAdams et al. (2008) that they are also relatively frequentcompared to the rest of Iberia in the Asturias andExtramadura. And while E and J haplotypes in Europeare often discussed together (e.g. Semino et al., 2004,Cruciani et al., 2007) the pattern of dispersal in Iberia ismatched by other Middle Eastern haplogroups, forexample G-M201 and K-M9(xM45) (Adams et al.,2008).

This situation, whereby headlines concerning tenuousattempts to reconstruct relatively recent and better-known movements of peoples, using very ancient UEPs,at the expense of studying the Neolithic, is common. Avery similar effect happens in the literature concerningSouthern Italy. Another recent paper, by Di Gaetano etal. (2008) concerning Sicily, focuses mainly on anattempt to find the traces of the Greek and Phoeniciancolonies once there. Once again, arguably the mostinteresting conclusions are not emphasized, but they arementioned. An significant difference in haplogroupswas found distinguishing the west and east of Sicily, butin the “wrong” direction: typical European haplogroupsR1b-M269 and I1-M253 are far more common inWestern Sicily, the area of highest Tunisian-related(including Phoenician) influence in recent centuries,while the Maghrebin lineages E-V65 and E-M81 are,

,

E-M123, E-V22, E-V12, G, J2-M172, J2-M67, K2-M70, and are found in the East, where many Greekcolonies once existed.9 Once again this pattern does notseem to match the historically famous records from themost recent millennia. Francalacci et al. (2003)confirms at least the Middle Eastern haplotypes being apresence in not only Sicily but also Sardinia and Corsica.

It is hard to avoid concluding when looking at such data,that north-western Iberia and parts of Sicily took part inthe same ancient movement of peoples which somehowcombined Y lineages that are today associated separatelywith the Maghrebin Northern Africa, and the MiddleEast. Given the position of both places, it seems wemust be looking for a movement of people aroundcoasts, but was there such a movement that wasimportant enough to leave patterns so significant thatthey seem to dominate the more recent effects we wouldhave expected from Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans,Berbers and Arabs?

There was such a culture in the Neolithic, whichprobably had a very considerable impact upon thepopulation of Southern Europe. This is the so calledCardial culture, named after its frequent use of Cardiumcockle shells to imprint their pottery.10 Zeder’s (2008)summary has their antecedents probably originating“somewhere in the Northern Levant” (approximatelymodern Lebanon and coastal Syria) and settling Cyprusabout 10,500-9,000 years ago, finding their way to theirapparent place of origin on the Greek side of thesouthern Adriatic about 9,000 to 8,000 years ago,entering the “boot heel” of southeastern Italy about8,000 years ago. In fact, there is no apparent consensusyet concerning the origins of this pottery culture beforeit appears in the southern Adriatic, and Zeder’s remarkrepresents one of the few speculations on the matterwhich the present author could find.

Pottery was one of the last elements of the Neolithicpackage to appear in the Fertile Crescent, apparentlybeginning about 8000 years ago with the Yarmukianculture in the southern Levant, which was a culture thatappears to have arrived in the area at a time of culturaldisruption in the area. The culture may have been9 It is also worth mentioning that the decision about dividing upsamples between “East” and “West” must have had an effect onresults. Unlike the above discussion concerning Iberia, the data fromSicily shows no strong East-West pattern, or other simple geographicalpattern, and the authors confirm “the general heterogeneous composi-tion of [haplogroups] in our Sicilian data” (DiGaetano, 2009).10 The earliest known manifestation of the Cardial culture in Italy andthe Adriatic is sometimes referred to as the “Impressa Culture." Theterm “Impressed Ware” is a more general term, not always referringto these specific cultures, but it is used by some authors to refer toCardial Cultures (Binder 2000, Barnett 2000). Battaglia et al (2009)have recently suggested that E-V13 lineages came to Southern Italyfrom the Balkans along with this early “Neolithic Impressed Ware.”We shall discuss this further below.

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brought by migrants. Pottery was significantly older inAfrica. Forms of impressed pottery were in the Saharain the early Holocene although these earliesttechnologies are not known from the Nile itself, asopposed to the Egyptian Western Desert (Phillipson,2005, p.156), and it is not clear if they ever reached anyof the cultures of the African Mediterranean directly.Instead it appears that pottery may have entered manyparts of the Maghreb at roughly the same time as MiddleEastern types of goat or sheep, (ovicaprids), after theNeolithic had arisen in the Middle East. But there arecomplications that must be considered before it can beconfidently proposed that Maghreb pottery had aLevantine in origin. The exact origin of pottery in boththese areas is still too unclear. And in some areas of theMaghreb such as the Tangiers region, Cardial pottery,generally associated with Europe, is among the oldeststyles to be found in the archaeological sequence(Phillipson, 2005, p.156).

Barich et al. (2006, p.579) remark that the Saharanculture and the Mediterranean Iberomaurusian cultureof 10,000 years ago were “entirely related” – “exceptfor the pottery." These authors state that after10,000kya, in the early Holocene, pottery arrived in theIberomaurusian areas, but that there is “currently verylittle information” about this. Similarly, the origins ofMiddle Eastern pottery before the Yarmukian, forexample whether it has any link to older Saharanpottery, are apparently not a subject about which muchcan be said yet. This ignorance of the origins and exactlinks of early Mediterranean pottery cultures impactsdirectly upon any attempts to explain the origins of theCardial culture within the greater scheme ofMediterranean pottery.

This Cardial culture was in the “boot” of Italy early, andfrom here it appears to have leapfrogged up the westerncoast of Italy to southern France by at least about 7,700to 7,600 years ago. The exact routes are not yet known,and what happened on the southern side of theMediterranean in Africa has been a gap in the story.

It is striking, but not often remarked, that pottery firstappears at a similar time in Italy, Greece, and the Levant.

Looking to the archaeological literature, Zilhão (2000,2001) describes the Cardial culture of NorthernPortugal as an early Neolithic “enclave” in WesternIberia, defying any simple model of “demic diffusion”from East to West. He proposes “leapfroggingcolonization by small seafaring groups ofagriculturalists” (Zilhão, 2000). This matches closelywhat we see with the Middle Eastern DNA in Iberia,including the relatively long distance from any obviouslyrelated European enclave of Cardial technology. Butcan this explain the North African lineages in Iberiabeing found in similar northern enclaves, it seems, withthe Middle Eastern genotypes? For example, could the

coast hoppers who got as far as the Atlantic have takenon an African component in their population beforepassing the Pillars of Hercules? Indeed, does this explainthe large gap between Portugal and Southern France thatthese colonists seem to have left to other cultures,including other streams of the Cardial culture?

From the archaeological side, this is indeed starting toappear likely. Manen et al. (2007) show that theZilhão’s maritime “leapfrog” understanding of theorigins of the Portuguese Cardial, wherein a rapidmovement is understood to have occurred from FrenchProvence to the Atlantic coast of Iberia, leaving verylittle convincing evidence in between, may owesomething to the relative poverty of data that has beenavailable for the Maghreb coastal cultures of this period.The authors showed that the increasing evidence nowbecoming available indicates that the Portuguese Cardialmay have Moroccan antecedents.

The pre-Islamic distribution of Berber languagescorresponded to populations where E-M81 and E-V65are dominant, and Berber languages are often seen bylinguists as a straightforward offshoot of the samenorthern branch of Afroasiatic which gave Egyptian andSemitic. According to a very straightforward “wave ofadvance” or “demic diffusion” hypothesis therefore, thepopulation, and therefore these E-M35 clades, would beexpected to come from due east–from the direction ofthe Nile and Levant. A similar simple hypothesis couldbe proposed for Berber languages, and also farmingtechnology and the herding of domestic ovicaprids. Butthis does not mean that all these ancient movementshappened at the same time, or followed the same routes.The idea of one simple migration bringing languages,genes and technologies is increasingly difficult to sustainas more complex archaeological data for this region ispublished.

The most notable patterns concerning E-M35 in theMaghreb can be defined as follows:

Firstly, both haplogroups, especially the more commonE-M81, are found elsewhere in small frequencies, intoAfrica, the Middle East, and Southern Europe, perhapsmost surprisingly in Turkish Cypriots (8.7% in Crucianiet al., 2007). But the mixture of E-M35 clades found inthe Maghreb is nevertheless best described as strikinglydifferent from those found from the Levant to the Hornof Africa.

Secondly, while there are unsurprisingly significantpresences of Middle Eastern and possibly Europeangenetic lineages in the Maghreb (for example Ychromosomal J haplogroups, see Semino et al., 2004),


E-M81 and E-V65 are very dominant and apparentlyrelatively young.

In the literature, ages are currently most often estimatedby using STR diversity in order to calculate when themost recent common ancestor lived. For the reasonsdiscussed above, the accuracy of this type of estimate isknown to be highly sensitive to pre-historic populationfluctuations, but it can be used to help give an idea ofhow recently a population started expanding.

The trend in the literature so far has between towardsyounger age estimations for E-M81. Bosch et al. (2001)estimated 15-43 kya for E-M81, but later Luis et al.(2004) estimated 2 kya, while noting that the smallamount of Egyptian E-M81 seemed older. Semino et al.(2004) estimated 8.6 kya. Arredi et al. (2004) estimated4.2 kya. Cruciani et al. (2004) estimated 5.6 kya, butmore recently in Cruciani et al. (2007), the authors showconcerns at this calculation technique, implying thatestimates be revised downwards to less than 5.6 kya.For E-V65 Cruciani et al. (2007) estimatedapproximately 4 kya.

The male-line ancestors of modern E-M81 and E-V65men did not always live in the Maghreb. The geneticsliterature indicates that these lines can be traced backover millennia to E-M35’s point of departure near theHorn of Africa. How long this took and which routewas taken, is very difficult to determine. For E-M81, asArredi et al. (2004) mention, the Middle East may evenhave been on this route. For E-V65 we can at leastsuggest that Egypt lies on the route, because it is in asub-clade of E-M78.

E-M81 and E-V65 have quite different pre-histories. Their distribution does not appear to beidentical (see the distribution data in Cruciani et al.,2004, 2007, and also Arredi et al., 2004), with E-V65more common amongst Arab speaking populations,including those to the East of the Maghreb region inLibya, and E-M81 more common as one approaches theAtlantic Ocean.

With the archaeological evidence we have so fardiscussed, we could expect the presence of E-M35lineages in the Maghreb to have followed one or moreof several likely routes:

The Sahara itself, lying to the south of modernMaghreb populations, had a higher populationduring greener periods. These populations maywell have contained E-M35 lineages by the start ofthe Holocene. Part of this population apparentlymoved north into the higher rainfall areas nearer tothe Mediterranean (Barker, 2002).

The Mediterranean coast, from the Nile/Levantarea, via Libya, where as Barker (2002) notes, therewas a similar culture, the Ibermaurusian, to theones found in the Levant before the full Neolithic.Barich et al. (2006, p.579) describe this culture asconnected to the Saharan cultures at least until theHolocene.

The Mediterranean sea, brought by the coast-hopping Cardial Neolithic cultures, presumably viaSicily, or other Mediterranean islands. ThatCyprus has a significant presence of E-M81 may yetturn out to be significant. In any case such leadsdeserve further checking in the near future.

Archaeology gives us reason to doubt the simplescenarios which the linguistic or genetic evidence mightimply. While the Maghreb clearly does show links withthe Nile, the Sahara and the Mediterranean, there aregood reasons to doubt that there was ever any simplereplacement of a less advanced Iberomaurusian, by amore advanced Capsian.

This means that it is not as simple as might once havebeen thought to link either the Maghrebin E-M35lineages, or the Afroasiatic Berber languages, to anyobvious overland migrants. Moreover, it is alsobecoming increasingly clear that the Cardial cultureassociated with the Southern European Neolithicdispersal, played a direct role in bringing Neolithictechnologies to the Maghreb via coastal routes (Manenet al., 2007; Linstädter, 2008; Daugas and El Idrissi,2008; see above concerning Iberia). This increases therange of possibilities and complicates things significantly.

Adding to the complexity, despite the domination ofE-M35 male (Y DNA) lines in this region of Africa, thereis a strong presence of mitochondrial (female line)haplogroups there which appear to come from Europe,and specifically Iberia, e.g., H1, H3 (see Cherni et al.,2008; Ennaffaa et al., 2009). This may representEuropean links of the pre-Neolithic Iberomaurusianculture. This was the same coastal culture whosedescendants eventually appear to have mixed with andabsorbed elements of the more advanced Cardialculture. It might appear unlikely that a modernpopulation might have its dominant mitochondrial andY DNA lineages from different original populations, butimbalanced marriage of a kind which might lead to thishas been observed in modern cases of farmer-foragerrelations, due to the cultural and economic dominanceof the farmers (Zvelebil and Little, 2000). So this veryimbalance could, in fact, be a sign that E-M35 did enterthe area with farming, pastoralism, or some otherdominant technology.

From an archaeological point of view, Graeme Barker(2002) proposes that Afroasiatic languages in the

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Maghreb need not have arrived with Neolithictechnologies from the Levant. He states that the “rapidcolonization of the Sahara at the beginning of theHolocene was by foragers, not farmers” (p.157). Thatthese foragers may have spoken an early dialect ofAfroasiatic, as the Neolithic farmers from the Levantlikely did, can be explained by noting “the similarities inthe respective archaeological records of the Natufianculture of the Levant and of contemporary foragers incoastal North Africa” (p.158).

Bender (1997) on the other hand writes that despiteassertions “that Berber is a diverse language family, allthat I have seen indicates that it is a language cluster, nomore internally diverse than (e.g.) Romance.” Hewould not suggest a split-off from the other Afroasiaticlanguages earlier than about 8-7,000 years beforepresent. As mentioned above, the most recent estimatesof the age of E-M81 and E-V65 seem to agree with suchage, at least when considered in terms of its own intra-clade diversity.

Blench (2001) makes a comment concerning Berberlanguages which parallels the Y DNA evidencestrikingly well:

Blench considers it likely that Berber existed for a verylong time in an “equilibrium” of loaning betweenclosely related and highly mobile languages, such as wasfound amongst the languages of Australian Aboriginals.It appears to be probable that the population of Ychromosomes in the Maghreb population shows a lowdiversity caused by a “founder effect.” When thisgrowth started is not clear yet, but it appears reasonableto suggest that Neolithic technology, and the entry ofAfroasiatic languages may have arrived at about thesame time. The dominance of E-M81 may have built upin the wake of the ensuing population growth.

In Europe, no Afroasiatic languages are considered to benative. Putting aside language correspondences how-ever, in Europe E-M35 and early Neolithic technologydo appear to show strong geographical corres-pondences. Neolithic technology entered the Europeanmainland earliest via the Balkans, and from there it isbelieved to have travelled westwards into Southern Italy(eventually developing into the coast hopping Cardialculture, discussed above) and northwards to the Danube(eventually developing into the Linearbandkeramiek or

“LBK” Culture).11 But it is the pattern of Neolithictechnology’s earliest entry into the Europe, rather thanits later dispersals, that has been compared to themodern distribution of E-V13, a sub-clade of E-M78.

E-V13 is a case of an E-M35 lineage with no obviouslink to Afroasiatic languages. It is one of the easiestEuropean Y lineages to assign an ancient migrationroute. E-V13 is found almost entirely in Europe, andwithin Europe mostly in the Balkans and Italy. Puttingthe question of timing aside at first, we can say that it isclear that E-V13 almost certainly dispersed to the rest ofEurope from somewhere in the Balkans.

What’s more, going further back in time it also seemsclear that there are remnants of a less common but morediverse E-V13 population in the Middle East, mostnotably so far amongst a small set of Druze Arabsreported in Cruciani et al. (2004, 2007) whose exactSTR haplotype looked less like European E-V13, andmore like other E-M78 sub-clades, E-V22 and E-V12,which Cruciani et al. (2004, 2006, 2007) associatedwith the area around Egypt. Battaglia et al. (2008) alsofound that Konya in present day southern Turkey had atleast a slightly higher diversity of E-V13 haplotypes thanany place they studied in the Balkans.

In summary, E-V13 in Europe dispersed from a Balkanfamily with deep E-M78 ancestry in the Middle East,and very deep E-M78 ancestry in the area of Egypt. Inany of these movements over time, was E-V13associated with the dispersal of new food productiontechnologies? Cruciani et al. (2004, 2007) have pointedto at least four possible periods suggested byarchaeology when major change in population in theBalkans could be envisioned:

The "post-Last Glacial Maximum expansion (about20 kya)"

The "Younger Dryas-Holocene reexpansion (about12 kya)"12

The "population growth associated with theintroduction of agricultural practices (about 8 kya)"

The "development of Bronze technology (about 5kya)"

Cruciani et al. (2007) propose the last and most recentof these, the Bronze age, as the period when the modernE-V13 population began to the rest of Europe

11 See, for example, Price ed. (2000), Bellwood (2005), Zeder (2008).12 According to Runnels (2003), by the time Neolithic settlers werecolonizing Greece from Asia, there was almost no population living inthe area. So any “Younger Dryas-Holocene” entry of E-V13 into theBalkans would have presumably experienced a subsequent populationbottleneck before somehow successfully integrating into the successfulNeolithic communities who arrived much later..


out of the Balkans. The same paper agrees with earlierpapers (e.g. Cruciani et al., 2004; Semino et al., 2004),in suggesting that the clade Europe withNeolithic technology, the next-youngest of the abovefour likely periods. Their age estimates of E-V13 as awhole suggest that it in the early Holocene inan E-M78 population of the Middle East.

Battaglia et al. (2008) propose timing which starts in thesame early Holocene period in Egypt, but then movesmore rapidly, with E-V13 probably originating in anE-M78 population that reached the Balkans alreadybefore the Neolithic arrived in these areas. They reasonthat the SNP mutation V13 itself may have evenhappened this far north, pointing to the low frequencyof E-V13 in modern central Anatolia and Crete, whichthey interpret as the areas from which Neolithictechnology probably came towards the Balkans.13

These authors propose that E-V13 later probablydispersed to Southern Italy with the Neolithic Cardialculture. In these two published scenarios, the startingpoint in Egypt in the early Holocene, and the finishingpoint of the Neolithic in the Balkans are the same.However, in the period in between Battaglia et al.visualize E-V13 keeping just ahead of the Neolithicwave moving north. Most other authors apparently seeit as having been in the wave itself.

Looking at archaeological evidence however, the wholearea between Egypt and the Balkans in the earlyHolocene was populated by the cultures that weredeveloping new food producing technologies. It is noteasy to imagine a population integrating into this areafrom Africa, then leaving in the direction of the Balkanswithout any of these new technologies. Along themigration path common to both these scenarios is theLevant, which immediately before the Neolithic was thehome of the Natufian culture. We have seen that thisculture very likely had both E-M35 Y lineages, as wellas an Afroasiatic language. Also this population is likely13 Some aspects of the Battaglia et al. (2008) article require extradiscussion, because it is in some conflict with the explanation given inthe present article. (1) According to this argument which draws verystrong conclusions about ancient populations from a modern lack ofevidence (low E-V13 in Central Anatolia and Crete), it seems weshould expect the Middle East and Anatolia to have high levels ofE-M78*. Indeed the authors keenly note the two examples they findin the Balkans. But on the whole it must be said that this argumentseems fatally flawed because E-M78* is not common in the MiddleEast (or anywhere), and we simply can not expect all ancient clades tostill be common where they once were. (2) Battaglia et al. also appearto ignore microsatellite variation data, both their own Konya data,and that of Cruciani et al. (2007), which do show higher implied agesfor E-V13 in Asia than Europe. (3) Finally their argument depends tosome extent on the assumption that the Neolithic in the Balkans musthave arrived from central Anatolia or Crete. However, from theearliest phases the early Balkan Neolithic clearly had “island hopping”capability, and trade networks which reached into Anatolia, so thereis no consensus on the route it took. It is in fact quite interesting thatnot only E-M78 lacks any obvious overland or island route betweenthe Levant and the Balkans. The same geographical gap in the evidenceis seen in the archaeological record of Neolithic dispersion (Perlès2001, Ch. 4).

to be one which is ancestral to the later Neolithicpopulations of the Fertile Crescent.

Could there be a linguistic aspect to this movement ofpeople from the Middle East to the Balkans? If we takethe Neolithic hypothesis, this would correspond to aperiod when a minority position would hold that Indo-European languages arrived in the Balkans from Asia.As in the case of Afroasiatic languages there arearchaeologists such as Colin Renfrew and PeterBellwood who consistently propose a “farming/-language dispersal hypothesis” with regards to majorlanguage families. These authors would propose thatIndo-European probably arrived in Europe fromAnatolia, as part of the technological revolution in foodproduction.

More commonly however, linguistic research, such asonce again examining flora and fauna vocabulary, leadsto the proposal that the Indo-European languagesoriginated in Europe, and not Asia. Indeed it is widelybelieved that the speakers of proto-Indo-Europeandescended from a pastoralist steppe people who cameinto contact with their Neolithic neighbours after theywere already established in Europe. Above, it hasalready been discussed how a similar scenario has beenproposed for the spread of Semitic in the FertileCrescent, as per Zarins (1990). In both cases it seemspossible that people with a pastoralist economyeventually came to dominate sedantary farmers,linguistically at least, following a pattern repeatedseveral times throughout history (Mallory 1989).Again, we should keep in mind that while Y lineages willbe affected by large population changes such as in theNeolithic, even large populations can change languagesrelatively easily without dramatic immigration.14

Theories about the early geographical origins of Indo-European languages and E-M35 do not match. Theearliest apparent geographical dispersals of Indo-European languages and E-M35 thus overlap stronglyonly in the Balkans, where the Indo-Europeansapparently spread their language to the most techno-logically advanced part of Europe at that time, butwhere, at least in Greek (the other old Balkan languagesare poorly known), a large percentage of vocabularyseems to be non-Indo-European (Mallory 1989, p.67).

Could Afroasiatic languages have been spoken in theBalkans before Indo-European languages arrived?There seems to be no evidence to support this. Indeedas discussed above, the Afroasiatic languages are at bestlikely to have been only one of the language groupsspoken by populations involved in the Middle EasternNeolithic. They never seem to have had a major impactin most of Anatolia, let alone Europe, and even in the14 And so we may perhaps note that a “farming/Y lineage dispersalhypothesis” might be stronger than a “farming/language dispersalhypothesis”!

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Fertile Crescent, Afroasiatic languages were possiblyonly spread after the Neolithic was established, due tothe success of pastoralists living near to farmingcommunities. Indo-European languages may actuallyhave built up their importance in a very similar way, notby being in a Neolithic language dispersal wave, but bybeing associated with pastoralists in the right place atthe right time to have a strong influence on farmingneighbours.

In contrast to the case for languages dispersing with thefirst Neolithic technology, the case for E-M35 havingbeen carried with the first wave of the Neolithic seemsstrong in Europe.

As has been mentioned, the highest diversity inAfroasiatic language, as well as in E-M35 haplogrouplineages, is found near the Horn of Africa. Below wegive short reviews of the probable correspondences, thelanguages, and the Y lineages, given the state ofknowledge at this time.

Cushitic takes its name from the ancient kingdom of“Kush,” to the south of Egypt, also known from theBible. It is a complex family15 within the greater groupof Afroasiatic languages in the Horn of Africa, but as thename tells us, it is sometimes thought to have come fromcloser to Egypt. Modern researchers also consider thislikely, for example Ehret (2002) and Diakonoff (1998).

Beja is either a sibling to the other Cushitic languages,or else its own clade within the Afroasiatic family, but itis generally thought probable that it has been in thesame place for a long time–between the Nile and the RedSea stretching through Sudan into both southern Egyptand Eritrea. An ancient version of this language isthought to have been spoken by the Blemmyes who wereinvolved in occasional conflict in and around the RedSea side of the Meroitic or Kush kingdom. Unfor-tunately there does not yet appear to be consensus aboutthe main language used in that kingdom itself, butanother ethnic group in and around this empire were theNubians, who appear to have spoken a non-AfroasiaticNilo-Saharan language. Ehret (2002b) proposes on thebasis of loanwords that Beja and Nilo-Saharan wereneighbours on either side of the Nile for a long time. Hefurthermore proposes that the Cushitic languagesmoved from a Red Sea homeland into the Ethiopianhighlands, whence they dispersed further.

E-M35 appears to show the implied southwardsmovements well, in the form of E-V12, a sub-clade ofE-M78. Cruciani et al. (2007) found highest E-V12*

15 E.g., see Bender (1997): “Others question the integrity of Cushiticand see it as comprising in itself up to six distinct independent families.”

frequencies in Southern Egyptians (44.3% of 79 people).Outside of the Egypt-Sudan-Horn axis it is scatteredonly very thinly, with very low frequencies outside ofAfrica.16 Hassan et al. (2008) report a significantpresence of E-V12* in neighbouring Sudan, including5/39 Nubians, and 5/33 Copts. E-V12* makes upapproximately 20% of the Sudanese E-M78.

Perhaps even more significant, a very distinct sub-cladeof E-V12, E-V32, dominates Somalia and is foundalmost solely in and around the Horn of Africa.Cruciani et al (2007) found "the highest frequencies inthe three Cushitic-speaking groups: the Borana fromKenya (71.4%), the Oromo from Ethiopia (32.0%), andthe Somali (52.2%).” Sanchez et al. (2005), looking atthe same clade using STR information in a study ofSomali men in Denmark, stated that "the male Somalipopulation is a branch of the East African population–closely related to the Oromos in Ethiopia and NorthKenya (Boranas)" and that their lineages "probablywere introduced into the Somali population 4000–5000years ago." It is therefore quite notable that Hassan etal. (2008) in their study, observed this to be the mostcommon of the sub-clades of E-M78 found in Sudan,especially among the Beja, as well as amongst theMasalit, and the Fur of Darfur.

Hassan et al. (2008) propose that this particular E-M78presence in Darfur “might have been brought to Sudanfrom North Africa after the progressive desertificationof the Sahara around 6000-8000 years ago” due tosudden climate change.

In summary, E-V12’s modern distribution and diversityappear to show that Cushitic speakers descend at leastpartly from the direction of Southern Egypt, near themodern homeland of the Beja language.

Another branch of Afroasiatic which is associated withsome controversy is the Chadic branch of the southernSaharan area. This is a group of languages whichincludes Hausa, and is clustered around the south ofLake Chad. The debate concerns the question of whichother Afroasiatic languages this group is closest to–Berber, or Chadic, or perhaps Egyptian. Did itsancestral form arrive in the area from the North (theSahara) or the East (towards the Horn of Africa) orperhaps from the direction of Egypt to the Northeast?

Results so far seem to show no especially strongrelationship to the E-M35 haplotypes found in thesethree possible source areas. Indeed, Chadic speakersshow unusually low levels of any E haplotypes at all,even compared to neighbouring populations. On theother hand they have a remarkably high R haplogroup16 Cruciani et al. (2007) report highest non-African frequencies inErzurum in Turkey (4%), and amongst French Basques (6.25%).


amounts only, and only in areas near to Europe orthe Middle East.

The R haplotypes found amongst Chadic speakersand their neighbours include a relatively highpercentage of unusual cases that are negative for theSNPs M269 and M17, which between themdominate the R haplotypes found in Europe. Thisperhaps indicates a Middle Eastern origin. Flores etal. (2005) compared the R-M173* haplotypes ofthis part of Africa to examples they found in theDead Sea population in Jordan. They consideredthe Dead Sea area as a probable example of anisolated community reflecting a sampling of theancient genetic population of the Levant. Asdiscussed above, it is also very unusual because ofits very high E-M34 presence.

Y-DNA evidence therefore seems to suggest that Chadicspeaking populations have male line ancestors whoarrived from the direction of the Middle East, possiblyvia the Nile. This is in conflict with proposals thatChadic came from the north, towards the Maghreb,which has been Ehret’s proposal (2002b). It is also theaccount given recently in Tishkoff et al. (2009), in whichEhret is a co-author. Instead, proposals for an easternorigin towards the Nile (e.g., Blench, 1999c) are clearlyfavoured by the presence of the R-M173* haplogroup,as well as by the lack of E-M81 and E-V65.

In this context the above-cited remarks of Hassan et al.(2008) concerning evidence of an E-M78-bearing Nilo-Saharan immigration into Sudan from the north,precisely into the area that separates Chadic from theancient Afro-Asiatic language zones of Egypt, the Beja,and the Horn of Africa, seem significant. We maytentatively ask whether such a migration could haveplayed a role in determining both the geographical andY-DNA isolation of Chadic speakers from otherAfroasiatic speakers.

That there was a movement of both Nilo-Saharan andCushitic peoples moving south from Egypt around 5500BCE is not controversial (e.g. Ehret, 2002b). But Blench(1999c) goes so far as to propose that languages “relatedto present-day Chadic were presumably once spoken ina strip across present-day Sudan but were later eliminat-ed by movements of Nilo-Saharan speakers.”

This is part of what Blench calls his “inter-Saharanhypothesis” whereby the Chadic languages descendfrom the languages of Cushitic pastoralists who movedwestwards “from the Nile Valley to Lake Chad, aswould the Shuwa Arabs, millennia later.” We are led towonder whether the Y DNA, with an apparently highEurasian component, possibly entered the ancestralpopulations of Chadic speakers along with the new“technology” of herding. Indeed, Blench proposes

frequency. R is the dominant haplogroup of Europe,and one of the major haplogroups of Eurasia generallyat least as far as India and Central Asia, but apparentlyancient pockets of this Eurasian lineage are found fromSudan down to Cameroon (Luis et al., 2004; Cruciani etal., 2002). We can summarise some of the surprisingresults found in the literature with particular referenceto Chadic speakers.

Cruciani et al. (2002) tested 54 Chadic speakingmen, including 21 Ouldeme (Uldeme) and 18 Daba,and from all these people only two E-M78 peoplewere found. But 38 of the 54 men were in the cladeR-M173, including all but one of the Ouldeme men.None of these men were positive for either M269 orM17, whereas most Middle Eastern and EuropeanR haplotypes are positive for one of these mutations.

Hassan et al. (2008) found that Sudanese Hausahave one of the lowest E haplogroup presences inthat country. They tested 32 Hausa and found onlyone E-M78 person that was M35+. On the otherhand 13 of these 32 men were R-P25, a sub-clade ofR-M173.

Wood et al. (2005) tested 19 Podokwo, 28Mandara, and 13 Uldeme (Ouldeme). One of thePodokwe was M78+ and this was the only E-M35amongst the Chadic group. R-P25 in this groupranged from 61-97%.

In a study of the Sahel by Bereir et al. (2007), M78was more common than M81, but amongst theHausa specifically, E-M78 was about 20% (out of66 people), whereas it was about 41% amongstother Afroasiatic speakers (out of 81 people), and26% amongst Nilo-Saharan speakers (out of 90people). On the other hand 47% of the Hausa menwere R-P25, while only 12 men out of theremaining 171 in this study were in this clade.

While the R haplogroup’s presence in Africa is notrestricted to Chadic speakers, also being found inneighbouring populations, the correspondence betweenthis language group and this haplogroup is striking inthe surveys done so far. This gives some quite surprisingimplications:

The male lineages found amongst Chadic speakersare very different from those amongst otherAfroasiatic language groups. Indeed, they seemgenetically, not only geographically, isolated fromother Afroasiatic speakers.

The dominant R lineage found amongst them isvery uncommon in most parts of Africa, and outsideof this central African region, it is found in small

60

exactly such changes as part of the complex of eventswhich sent the Chadic language family on a path to itspresent home, leaving Afroasiatic loanwords fordomestic animals in many languages in Sudan.

The case of Chadic is an example which rewards abroader look at different types of DNA (MacEachern,2007). That the Y DNA of this population, looked at inisolation, shows no obvious similarity to those of otherAfroasiatic populations is not surprising, because whenwe look at Y lineages we are restricted only to a smallpart of the human genome, and usually the part whichis most likely to emphasize the prehistoric geographicmovements of new technologies, new ways of life, andlanguages (Wood et al., 2005). The recent autosomalDNA study of Tishkoff et al. (2009) confirms that onthe whole, Chadic speakers are more closely related totheir Nilo-Saharan neighbours than to any other Afroa-siatic group. Looking at the genome beyond Y-DNAthese peoples show far less Eurasian ancestry that theBeja, for example.

However, in contrast to what we see with Y DNA andautosomal DNA though, erný et al. (2009) proposethat mitochondrial DNA links appear to exist in be-tween Chadic speakers and Cushitic speakers far to theEast. So as with the Berber population in NorthernAfrica, the dominant paternal and maternal lines inmodern Chadic populations may have quite differentorigins, with the female lines continuing to show signsof ancient links with distantly related peoples.

Omotic is a remote family of languages found in South-western Ethiopia, including areas near to SouthernSudan and Northern Kenya. In this case debate centreson whether Omotic is Afroasiatic at all. Also in thiscase, data is still building up.

Amongst Omotic speakers, the present author is onlyaware of one genetic sample of Wolayta from Ethiopia,who are included in the sample set of Cruciani et al.(2004, 2007). This study showed that out of 12 peopletested, no less than 9 were in the E haplogroup:-

2 individuals 2 individuals

1 individual 1 individual 1 individual

2 individuals

In other words 7 of the 12 men tested were E-M35+.This result is relatively typical of other regions inEthiopia in the same Cruciani dataset. In detail we canremark:

E-V6 is only found in the Horn of Africa and Kenyaso far (Cruciani et al., 2004).

E-M34, a sub-clade of E-M123 discussed above, isnot considered likely to have originated in the Hornof Africa (as discussed above), but is found in areaswhere Semitic languages are spoken, especiallyincluding the South Semitic languages of Ethiopia.The Amhara, to the north of the Omotic region, area dominant ethnic and linguistic group in Ethiopia,and they have high levels of E-M34. This showsunsurprisingly that the Wolayta are not isolatedfrom other Ethiopians. E-M34 seems to haveentered the area with Semitic languages, andtherefore long after the split between Omotic andthe other Afroasiatic languages.

E-V32, a sub-clade of E-V12, is especially foundamongst Cushitic speaking peoples so far, fromEthiopia and Somalia. As discussed above, itappears to have migrated from the area of SouthernEgypt (Cruciani et al., 2007) but in Sudan it ismainly found amongst the Northern Beja and inDarfur, and not apparently amongst the SouthernSudanese who are neighbours to the Omoticspeaking peoples (Hassan et al., 2008).

E-V22, like E-V32, probably entered the area in aback migration from the direction of Egypt alongthe Nile (Cruciani et al., 2007). It is also foundthroughout neighbouring Sudan in smallfrequencies (Hassan et al., 2008).

In recent times Hassan et al. (2008) has given us someinsight into the Y chromosomes of the peoples to theWest of the Omotic languages, in southern Sudan.Amongst the Nilo-Saharan speaking Dinka, Shilluk andNuer, E-M78 makes up about 25% of the male lines.This includes the above-mentioned northern sub-clades,E-V12* and E-V22, both also found in similar smallamounts in the Wolayta. Unfortunately Hassan et al.did not test for E-M123 or E-M34 or E-V6, but in anycase, out of 53 people tested in these three Sudanesegroups, only one was in E-M215 who was not inE-M78. Perhaps more importantly, in all three SouthSudanese groups the sub-saharan haplogroups A3b2-M13 and B-M60, were both far more common than anyother clade including the E haplogroups which dominateCruciani et al.’s Wolayta data.

The E-M35 evidence therefore agrees with what appearsto be a consensus–that the Omotic group is related toother Ethiopian groups, or at least more related to themthan to any other neighbouring peoples. Howeverconcerning the purely linguistic question about verydistantly related languages, it is difficult to dismissarguments such as that of Orel and Stolbova, thatOmotic was in a “ ” with Cushitic, with


much loaning of vocabulary and even grammar, makingthe phylogenetic tree difficult to reconstruct. Of course,ethnic groups in a Sprachbund are normally bound bygenetic ties also, and it appears that Orel and Stolbovaaccept that the “Cushomotic” Sprachbund may havecommon Afroasiatic roots.17

That there is a significant amount of E-M35 scattered inEastern and Southern Africa was known since at leastSemino et al. (2004) and Luis et al. (2004), but it wasnot until Henn et al. (2008) that a defining UEP wasdiscovered that distinguished them from other E-M35clades. They are therefore now identifiable as mainlycorresponding to their own sub-clade of E-M35 namedE-M293.

The dominant language family by far in these parts ofAfrica is Bantu, but not amongst populations who havethe highest E-M293 levels. In the most southerlyextensions of this genetic presence the languages areKhoisan or “click” languages, generally associated withthe ancient hunter gatherers of all these regions beforethe Bantu migrations. The authors argue that thisclade’s dispersal is in any case too old to be associatedwith the Bantu expansion, and indeed we can point outas discussed above that Bantu populations are notassociated with E-M35. Instead the authors propose alink to the introduction of Nilo-Saharan languages andpastoralism into these areas, before the Bantu languagesand Iron Age technology became dominant.

Although there is no evidence that Nilo-Saharanlanguages made it as far as Angola and Namibia,pastoralism itself did of course travel further than thelanguages, and as the authors discuss, pastoralists andKhoisan hunter gatherers are known in their areas ofoverlap to have merged in populations in Tanzania,further north, which are also amongst those with thehighest E-M293 presence.

As discussed above, the Nilo-Saharan and Cushiticlanguages have been suggested by Ehret as being ancientpastoralist neighbours from the Eastern Sahara. Ehret(2002b) presents us with a review of the entry ofpastoralism from the north into Kenya and Tanzaniawhich also emphasizes the fact that it contained not onlyNilo-Saharan groups, but also Cushitic speaking groups.

Henn et al.’s focus upon Nilo-Saharan is dependentupon one population in their study, the Datog, who hadthe highest frequency and diversity of E-M293 in their454-person, 13-population study. Two Afroasiaticpopulations, the Wafiome and Burunge also scoredhighly, but were not tested as thoroughly. It will be very17 This is cited in Bernal (1987) and Blench (2006). Blench remarks“these authors do not go into print with family trees” but he reportshis understanding as supplemented by personal communication.

interesting to see how this pattern develops as more datais collected for this newly discovered clade.

Review of what is being learnt about the E-M35haplogroup confirms that despite real difficulties for thenew discipline, genetics is quickly becoming a morepowerful tool, adding to those already in the hands ofresearchers studying ancient migrations. Furthermore,some of these growing pains perhaps stem frominsufficiently detailed multi-disciplinary efforts in thefield so far, debatably leading to an over-emphasis uponmovements of people which are relatively well-knownand recent.

Advantages of using genetics as a tool include:

Phylogenetic (“family tree”) relationship structurescan be defined exactly even for very oldrelationships. In linguistics this becomes verydifficult at a certain time depth, as in the cases ofOmotic and Chadic. In archaeology, unanimousagreement about relationships between differentmaterial cultures is rare.

Techniques for the estimation of ages within suchfamily trees structures, while controversial, are lesscontroversial than in linguistics, and therefore givea useful cross-reference to archaeological dating insuch a way that strong indications of relationshipsbetween different times and places are alsosometimes revealed.

The scope for further rapid development ofknowledge in this field is still extremely large.Looking at Y DNA in particular, compared to mito-chondrial and autosomal DNA, it is particularlywell-suited to attempts to reconstruct the move-ments of the most mobile elements of cultures, suchas languages and technologies.

Concerning Afroasiatic, this review has been able toshow how looking to one Y-chromosome haplogroup

can increasingly help to add a new perspective inmulti-disciplinary discussions, both by narrowing thelikely options and helping to propose others forattention. Especially important in this regard is to gobeyond simply remarking the similarities ofgeographical distributions, (such as that of E-M35 andAfroasiatic as a whole) by looking at phylogenetic sub-structure (for example the specific sub-clades inNorthern Portugal) and super-structure (such as theevidence that E-M35 has origins quite far from theLevant). Perhaps the most important thing about this,is that the level of phylogenetic detail which can beclearly defined, can increase almost without limit in thefuture, until even individual families can be identified

62

and placed into the greater phylogeny of all men bylooking at SNP mutations. This is not yet practical on alarge scale, but it seems inevitable, given current trends.

Our review of the E-M35 evidence gives many insightsuseful for multidisciplinary consideration in bothlinguistics and archaeology:

The evidence strongly suggests that the male lineagemost strongly associated with Afroasiatic, E-M35,clearly has an origin far from the Levant, in Africa.

In Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula,E-M35 is strongly associated with Afroasiaticlanguages, with the strongest links being in a greatcurve from the Maghreb to the Horn of Africa. InAnatolia and Europe this association is not apparent.

Northern and Eastern Iberia appear to show signsof immigration which combined Middle Easternand North African roots, and was possiblyassociated with the Neolithic Cardial culture.

More generally, pockets of ancient Middle Easternderived diversity seem to be scattered around theMediterranean coasts and islands, possibly also dueto the Cardial culture, and related Neolithic cultures.

Berber populations, while overwhelminglydominated by specific E-M35 male lineages, are notin the same sub-clades as found along the Nile andinto the Horn of Africa.

At least when looking to E-M35 and Y DNA, wecan see that Chadic speakers are not onlygeographically isolated from other Afroasiaticspeakers, but also to some extent, geneticallyisolated from them. This conclusion appears tosupport the “inter-Saharan hypothesis” of Blench(1999c) as an explanation concerning the origins ofChadic.

That Cushitic languages came from the North closerto Egypt, is a possibility strongly favoured by theE-M35 evidence.

Populations speaking Omotic languages, like thoselanguages themselves, are more closely related toother Ethiopians than to nearby Nilo-Saharanspeaking populations.

In some areas, looking at E-M35 on its own does not yetgive enough fine detail to make a contribution to on-going debates, and future research will need to involvefiner resolution of sub-clades as yet undiscovered and/orthe comparison of many different types of genetic data,including other regionally important Y haplogroups

(such as Y haplogroup J), mitochondrial DNA, andautosomal (recombining) DNA.

Very recent advances in the archaeology of the relevantareas such as the Maghreb were also shown to be veryimportant, and this is likely to be a continuing trendwhich deserves constant attention from genetic andlinguistic researchers into these areas.

The author wishes to thank Ofer Ben-Yosef, DirkSchweitzer, Jörg Lindtstädter, Victor Villareal, PeterHrechdakian, Steven C. Bird, Sylvestre de Carvalho,Tim Reynolds, Jesus Flavio Martinez Morales, VincentJohn Palozzi, Graeme Barker and Matthias Brenzingerfor their encouragement, and their assistance in helpingto collect and understand a wide range of literature, inmany fields. He also thanks the active membership ofthe E-M35 Phylogeny Project, and “Dienekes Pontikos”of the Dienekes Anthropology Blog, for their thought-provoking discussion, which both inspired and informedthis review of the published literature beyond genetics.Thanks must also go to Carlos Flores, and AntonioBrehm for answering questions about their publishedworks.

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