A new analysis of ancient human DNA demonstrates that people moved and chose their reproductive partners along complex social networks that stretched across large swathes of Africa between 80,000 and 20,000 years ago, according to a study co-led by Yale anthropologist Jessica Thompson.
These movements continued for tens of thousands of years before people began to live more locally, and long before they began farming and keeping livestock. The study, published Feb. 23 in the journal Nature, provides the first genetic evidence of major demographic changes among hunter-gatherer populations in eastern and south-central Africa during the last Ice Age. The analysis includes the earliest DNA extracted from ancient human remains in Africa and the oldest from anywhere in the tropics. The findings reveal that these foragers shared genetic connections across a region that now stretches thousands of miles, from Ethiopia to South Africa, and into the central African rainforest. They also support hypotheses developed by archaeologists that demographic shifts accompanied well-documented changes in material culture that occurred in the Later Stone Age, starting about 50,000 years ago, said Thompson, an assistant professor of anthropology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “The earliest innovation of things like personal ornaments and clothing took place in Africa as far back as 130,000 years, but around 50,000 years ago, we start to see an overall increase in the complexity and diversity of human-made objects,” said Thompson. “Seeing this widespread genetic mixing shows that people really were moving a lot, exchanging their genes and ideas.” Read more...
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