The Savanah Pastoral Neolithic Culture
As these innovative practices seeped into their cultural fabric, a remarkable journey was soon to unfold. The Savannah Pastoral Neolithic culture took root in the Middle East, with its people harnessing the power of animals, particularly cattle, sheep, and goats. These groups can most likely be identified as the Natufians, who were among the groups of hunter gatherers who 1st were to develop farming and animal domestication strategies. We know this because this Natufian component can be seen to represent almost half of the ancestry of the Pastoral Neolithic, and various other Cushitic speaking Horn African populations.
But what set this ancient culture apart was their genetic makeup, shaped by the blending of various populations. The Savannah Pastoral Neolithic people mingled with the ancient Proto Nilotic populations, related to the Nilo Saharan people of East Africa. It is in the Sudanese Nubia region, around 8000 years ago, that this genetic fusion likely occurred, laying the foundation for the Savannah Pastoral Neolithic culture. We know this because this sub sharan can be found in all Cushitic speaking populations of Horn Africa at high amounts. Accounting for around 50-60% of their dna. And because of the common paternal Haplogroup Em293, a sub group of the E1b1b which likely had its origins in the Levant area.
Recent genetic research has shed light on the DNA of the pastoral Neolithic culture in Kenya. A 4000 year old sample from Kadruka, Sudan, has been found to be genetically indistinguishable from the earlier populations of the Kenyan Savannah pastoral Neolithic culture. This discovery has bridged the ties between the Savannah pastoral Neolithic cultures and the Sudanese Nubia region. The genetic similarities found between these populations suggest a significant level of interaction and population movement between the two regions, reinforcing the idea of interconnectedness and cultural exchange during the Neolithic period.
As time passed, these dynamic communities embarked on a transformative journey across the African continent. They migrated from Sudan, making their way through the Horn of Africa, with their invaluable knowledge of animal domestication in tow. Eventually, they settled in the Kenyan Turkana region and the Great Rift Valley, around 4000 years ago. Archeological evidence attest to this because of early pottery of these Afro Asiatic speech communities in Kenyas Turkana region shows high affinities with the Wavy Line, and Khartoum Neolithic Culture of the Sudan.
The Savannah Pastoral Neolithic people, armed with their domesticated animals, played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape they traversed. They lived in harmony with nature, adapting their practices to the diverse environments they encountered, and leaving behind a legacy that resonates to this day.
Recent genetic research has shed light on the DNA of the pastoral Neolithic culture in Kenya. A 4000 year old sample from Kadruka, Sudan, has been found to be genetically indistinguishable from the earlier populations of the Kenyan Savannah pastoral Neolithic culture. This discovery has bridged the ties between the Savannah pastoral Neolithic cultures and the Sudanese Nubia region. The genetic similarities found between these populations suggest a significant level of interaction and population movement between the two regions, reinforcing the idea of interconnectedness and cultural exchange during the Neolithic period.
What we know off of the archeological record suggest that much of the earlier populations of the areas primarily inhabited by the pastoral neolithic populations was inhabited by East African hunter gatherer & forager communities. Much of whom these early Cushitic speaking pastoralist communities interacted with. We know this because in early DNA samples of these Neolithic pastoralist we see a decent amount of East African Mota related ancestry.
The Savannah pastoral Neolithic culture exhibited a distinct material culture. One notable aspect of their society was the practice of constructing large stone monuments known as cairns to honor their deceased. Additionally, this culture prided itself on the production of exquisite ceramics and stone bowls, creating a legacy of rich craftsmanship. However, a notable shift occurred around 1000bp when the use of stone bowls seems to have been abandoned. The Savannah pastoral Neolithic people were also known for their domestication of cows and goats, highlighting their agricultural practices. Significant sites such as Luxmanda showcased their cultural heritage. Furthermore, the culture primarily used stone tools until the arrival of Bantu farmers, who introduced metal tools to theses communities, but the switch from stone tools to iron ones wasn’t made until around 1200 AD, leading to a significant technological advancement.
The archaeological site of Luxmanda in northern Tanzania offers intriguing insights into the dynamics of the Savannah pastoral Neolithic culture. It challenges established notions regarding the geographical division between pastoralist communities and hunter-gatherer communities in North Tanzania, as Luxmanda is located relatively south in Kenya. This suggests a more complex interaction and overlapping of these communities than previously believed. Additionally, DNA studies conducted at Luxmanda reveal an increased presence of hunter-gatherer related ancestry. As one of the southernmost members of the Savannah pastoral Neolithic culture, Luxmanda was surrounded by East African hunter-gatherer populations, which likely contributed to this genetic makeup. These findings shed light on the intermingling and exchange of cultural and genetic aspects between these distinct groups in the ancient past.
The transition from the Kenyan pastoral Neolithic period to the Iron Age period in the Kenyan Rift Valley region brought significant changes both genetically and culturally. With the arrival of Nilotic and Bantu speakers, major genetic shifts occurred, leading to the formation of diverse ethnic groups. Additionally, these new settlers introduced farming techniques and ironworking skills, revolutionizing the local economy and way of life. The adoption of agriculture allowed for sedentary lifestyles and the establishment of permanent settlements, enabling the development of more complex societies. The introduction of ironworking further transformed the region, leading to advancements in tools, weapons, and trade. Overall, this transitional period marked a crucial turning point in the history of the Kenyan Rift Valley, shaping the genetic composition and cultural practices of the region.
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"The Savannah Pastoral Neolithic culture took root in the Middle East, with its people harnessing the power of animals, particularly cattle, sheep, and goats."
ReplyDeleteWhy would you attribute the Pastoral Neolithic as having its origins in the Middle East as opposed to the Eastern Sahara, where the culture actually originated? You also attribute the domestication of the cattle to the Middle East, when there have been arguments and studies demonstrating its indigeneity in the Eastern Sahara.
"The Savannah Pastoral Neolithic people mingled with the ancient Proto Nilotic populations, related to the Nilo Saharan people of East Africa. It is in the Sudanese Nubia region, around 8000 years ago, that this genetic fusion likely occurred, laying the foundation for the Savannah Pastoral Neolithic culture."
Again with this? Why do you have insert Jebel Sahaba Nubians as solely the source for this ancestry you erroneously call "Proto-Nilotic"? There's no evidence to assert that this admixture event that gave rise to the Savannah Pastoralists or even Cushitic speakers remotely took place in their habitable area along the Nile Valley. In fact, later Nubian cultures such as the A-Group, who succeeded them, have generally been shown to have less phenotypic continuity with the Mesolithic Nubians, despite the presence of pronounced physical traits we generally called "negroid" existing amongst them. What's even more ironic is that the genetic study on the Pastoral Neolithic actually postulated that the approximate source for the Savannah Pastoralists ancestry prior to migrating into inner East Africa, was genetically akin to the Beja:
"To test these hypotheses and gain further insight into changes in ancestry over time, we carried out a second round of analysis in qpAdm using pairs of reference groups linked more closely with each historical phase. For the initial spread of pastoralism, we used Hadendowa (Sudanese Beja plus Mota. It is likely that the genetic landscape of northeastern Africa has changed substantially since the time of the events we are modeling, so we do not propose that Hadendowa are descended directly from ENP; rather, we chose them to serve as a proxy for the (approximate) mixture of ancestries hypothesized to be present in the true ENP-related source (on the basis of the PCA and qpAdm results above). This two-way model yields a good fit for the PN individuals"
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6827346/
Mind you, the Beja have complex admixture history, stemming from an ancestral population that was much like themselves now, (Cushitic-like) but who later required Nilotic ancestry, making them more of an African-shifted population, who later required Arab geneflow, making them more Cushitic-shifted.
"And because of the common paternal Haplogroup Em293, a sub group of the E1b1b which likely had its origins in the Levant area."
DeleteE-m293 did not come from the Levant. It's a subclade of E-V1515, which in turn is a subclade of E-Z827, which has its origins in Northeast Africa:
"Moreover, using a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis and a single nucleotide polymorphism-based approach we localized and dated the origin of this new lineage in the northern part of the Horn, about 12 ka. Time frames, phylogenetic structuring, and sociogeographic distribution of E-V1515 and its subclades are consistent with a multistep demic spread of pastoralism within north-eastern Africa and its subsequent diffusion to subequatorial areas."
"Our data on the distribution and phylogeny of the E-V1515 haplogroup support and extend this hypothesis. We propose that the migration marked by the E-M293 haplogroup could be the final step of a north-to-south range expansion linked to different branches of E-V1515, which initially involved people from Eritrea (and possibly northern Sudan, not sampled here). This migratory route is concordant in time and space with archeological evidence for early domestication of African cattle in northeastern Africa about 10 ka, southward climate-driven movements of herders into southern Ethiopian highlands and Turkana basin (northern Kenya) around 4 ka, and a subsequent subequatorial pastoralist expansion toward southern Kenya/Tanzania and southern Africa not before 3 ka."
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524485/
1st of I'd like to say that I do a free with most of your points. The Pastoral Neolithic Culture didn't start exactly in the Middle East, and rather it was more likely on the eastern desert, the main reason why this was written this way, was to describe how the origins of pastorali in the Middle East, and its spread into Africa gave rise to the pastoral communities of Eastern Africa, and how that then gave rise to the Pastoral Neolithic Culture.
DeleteFor your point on Cattle pastoralism's indigeneity to the Eastern African region. I want to make it clear that I made this statement on the basis that the earliest evidence of cattle pastoralists were from the fertile crescent, being dated to 10,000bp and that it would only make sense that with the spread of pastoralism, of animals like sheep, and goats, that cattle would be included as well. However, I would be open to reading any papers that support the idea of cattle pastoralism's idegeneity to eastern Africa.
Now for your point on Jebel Sahaba, I will say I'm a bit confused, and I don't know what your'e getting at here. Are you saying that I shouldn't have called the "Proto NIlotics" from a linguistics perspective (meaning that since they weren't exactly speakers of "Nilotic Languages", and that I should've opted for a term like "mesolithic Nubian", "ancient Nilo Saharan like populations" or "ancestral East African"? Or that they weren't like Nilotic/Nilo Saharan/eastern Sudanic populations at all(ancestrally or genetically)? Because if you are arguing for the latter, than I beg to differ, because although there parent so many ancient dna samples from East Africa, I will say that from what we know about the modern genetic landscape, its very clear that whoever was walking around North East Africa at that point in time was very much most similar to the modern day Nilotic Dinka-Nuer populations. To say the least, we know this because the ancestral components which we see peak in the Nilotic populations like the Dinka and Nuer, we see that this ancestry exist in a large areas across the east African region, we also know this due to studies on haplogroups on both ancient and modern populations (including sudanese copt & ancient Haplogroup DNA analysis in the sudanese Nubian region). As for your point on the point you mad eon the a group, but I remembering reading that there osteological samples were described as being "caucasoid", physically resembling East Africans, and early Egyptians Badaraian and Naqada culture (who ere said to resemble Ethio-Semitic and Somali populations). This means that their ancestry must have been mixed (which is why I say that the admixture event that created the Pastoral N & all Cushitic groups 1st took place in the Sudanese Nubia region, mostly in lower Nubia) and they slowly migrated to the eastern regions toward the eastern regions near the Red Sea. However, I'm not 100% solid on this admixture happening *only in Lower Nubia, I'll give some leeway for it maybe also occurring in the eastern deserts as well, so if you can't send me research that refutes this lower Nubian location admixture for Cushitics, bring it forward.
DeleteAlso, if we use Somalis as a reference of for "Pure Cushites" then Bejas don't fall on that, they are very eurasian shifted and cluster closer to Ethio-Semetic populations then that do to Cushitic populations actually, because of their Arabian component, so the only way for this to be possible would be through the early Pastoral N Population to be very eurasian shifted (which they probs were because of the early Pastoral Neolithic samples were heavy in Eurasian ancestry). But I don't know where you got that they received an extra amount of Nilotic related ancestry, but if so it may be through the eastern Sudanics expansion during the Wadi Howar diaspora, and it didn't really push then beach towards the Cushitic populations much.
DeleteAnd finally, for your point on the E- M293 linages not being for the Levant, obviously the sub-clade didn't originate in the Levant, but when going off the Afro Asiatic expansions which *possibly could've expanded form that area. Which would mean that ancestral sub-clades to this lineage would've originated there (obviously after the African origins of the E haplogroups at large).
Al in all, I think you raised some good point and pointed out some important left out details made on my part.
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Delete"we also know this due to studies on haplogroups on both ancient and modern populations (including sudanese copt & ancient Haplogroup DNA analysis in the sudanese Nubian region)."
DeleteThat's fine and all, but again these ancestral populations that contributed East African geneflow to these modern populations are still not compatible with each other, despite being genetically equivalent to each other. This is like saying all Eastern Eurasians are the same because they all have Eastern Eurasian ancestry.
"As for your point on the point you mad eon the a group, but I remembering reading that there osteological samples were described as being "caucasoid", physically resembling East Africans, and early Egyptians Badaraian and Naqada culture (who ere said to resemble Ethio-Semitic and Somali populations)."
Yes, the A-Group Nubians were morphologically Northeast African with some Equatorial variability (Mesolithic Nubians in this case) as I previously mentioned. They were quite craniometrically similar to Somalis specifically. The Badarians were more centroid between the A-Group and African groups like Jebel Moya (Nilotic) or even sometimes being placement as modern Gabonese with some divergent-ness on their part. They were quite craniometrically similar to the C-Group Nubians, who had more Equatorial variability (Nilotic substratum) than the A-Group Nubians, and had an affinity to the modern Teita and Dogon. The Naqadans were morphologically akin to Northeast Africans with much of the variation as their predecessors (Badarians), only that the Naqadans had more northern (Lower Egyptian) variation, whereas the Badarians had little to none.