The genetic structure of the world's first farmers (Israel)

[Apollo]

Came across a new study out analyzing the genetic ancestry of the first Middle Eastern farmers (12,5000 BCE - 9,500 BCE in Israel). See Natufian culture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian_culture

Their Y-Chromosome was high in E1b1b, their mtDNA high in N1b. Their autosomal ancestry was high in Basal Eurasian with no Sub-Saharan ancestry. An ancient sample from the Zargos Mountains in Iran had the most Basal Eurasian. Modern Saudi Bedouins are the closest living population to the first Middle Eastern farmers from 12 thousand years ago in Israel. Interesting..

Also, the study mentioned that the West Eurasian ancestry in the Horn of Africa was closest to these Ancient Levantine Farmers:

Previously, the West Eurasian population known to be the best proxy for this ancestry was present-day Sardinians, who resemble Neolithic Europeans genetically. However, our analysis shows that East African ancestry is significantly better modelled by Levantine early farmers than by Anatolian or early European farmers, implying that the spread of this ancestry to East Africa was not from the same group that spread Near Eastern ancestry into Europe (Extended Data Fig. 4; Supplementary Information, section 8).

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/16/059311.figures-only
http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/06/16/059311.full.pdf

@Geeljire @Hafez

 

[Canuck]

ancient Egypt was the first civilisation that started agriculture.

 

[Geeljire]

So the Ancient West Eurasian ancestry in Horners are from Ancient Levantine Farmers?

Ancient ancestry of the worlds first farmers

 

[Grant]

http://quatr.us/timelines/7000bc.htm

"- Around 10,000 BC, with the end of the last major Ice Age, people all over the world - not everyone, but a lot of people - began to shift from fishing and hunting and gathering to farming as their main way of getting food. North Africans, Egyptians, and West Asians were already farming figs, and now they added barley and wheat, chickpeas and lentils. They made beer out of the barley, and they learned from Central Asians how to make pottery to drink it in. They started to build stone temples like this one at Gobekli Tepe, and mud-brick houses in towns like Jericho and Catal Huyuk. Around 8000 BC, they also began to grow grapes and make wine. By 6000 BC West Asian people were planting olive orchards to get olive oil.

People started farming in other places too. By around 8000 BC, South American people in Ecuador and Peru were growing squash and potatoes, and soon after that they were growing chili peppers and corn. In Brazil they grew yuca root and peanuts, instead. In Southeast Asia, it was bananas and plantains. Around 7000 BC, people were growing rye for rye bread and planting apple trees in Central Asia. By 6000 BC, people in southern China were growing rice. Then about 5000 BC, South Americans added beans to their squash and corn.


Along with farming, people also began to keep farm animals. By about 10,000 BC, people in Central Asia and Europe were beginning to keep pigs. In South-East Asia and southern China, they were keeping chickens by around 7000 BC, and people started to keep sheep in West Asia and Egypt about the same time. By 5500 BC, people in Central Asia had also tamed the wild aurochs and turned them into cattle, which they kept for both meat and milk (and yogurt and cheese). Around 5000 BC, South Americans were raising guinea pigs for their meat, and by about 4000 BC, they were keeping llamas too. Also about 4000 BC, people in Sudan tamed donkeys.

Once people were farming, they also started to grow crops to make rope and clothing too. About 5000 BC-4000 BC people all over the world began to spin and weave clothes out of flax and hemp, cotton and wool.

Still people kept experimenting with new crops. By 4500 BC, they were growing millet and probably peaches in China. By around 4000 BC, people in Sudan, south of Egypt, were growing dates and millet and in Aksum (modern Ethiopia) they were growing another kind of grain, teff. In both West Africa and East Africa, people were pressing palm nuts for palm oil. About the same time, Peruvian people were growing avocados.

But not all of the changes of this time were things people invented. People also continued to evolve naturally. As people traveled further north, their children evolved to have whiter skin, because there wasn't as much sunshine and they needed to soak up more sunshine to make enough Vitamin D to stay healthy. Sometime around 5000 BC, in Europe, the first people evolved who had white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes."

 

[Grant]

Lactase persistence in humans is less than 8,000 years old and does not include everybody. If you can digest milk as an adult, check these videos.

 

[BebsiBolice]

what does this mean? Can someone explain to me?

 

[Grant]

Barni,

I posted another article, which has disappeared. ???

Lactase is what allows you to digest milk, and all mammal infants have it, but most lose it as adults. Fresh milk makes 65% of all human adults sick. Most East Asians have to ferment milk or make cheese before they can utilize it. Lactase persistence in humans only developed after the beginnings of agriculture and dairying. Read Amun's initial post in this context.

What does it mean?

The ability to digest milk spread with Eurasian agriculture and animals:

"In Africa, genetic variants associated to LP [lactase persistence] are mainly found in pastoralist populations; therefore, study of LP-associated variants in different groups helps to generate knowledge about past relationships [18 and 19]. We demonstrate that the East African LP variant is present at greater frequencies in traditionally pastoralist Khoe groups, here represented by the Nama, compared to San hunter-gatherers and Bantu-speaking farmers. The haplotype background for the East African LP variant in southern Africans was the same as the East African haplotype background. The presence of the East African LP variant in the Khoe suggests an admixture event, probably associated with the spread of pastoralism into southern Africa. This hypothesis is supported by analyses of genome-wide data that detect a 13% admixture fraction (most similar to East African Afro-Asiatic groups) in the Nama. Given the small but significant East African genetic component in the Nama, an exclusive cultural- or demic-diffusion model seems unlikely. Our results support an interpretation of a small group of Afro-Asiatic pastoralists from East Africa who migrated to southern Africa where they became assimilated by a local San hunter-gatherer group. This group adopted a pastoralist lifestyle and was the ancestors of the Khoe. Thus—consistent with some linguistic hypotheses on the origin of the Khoe languages [37] and with Y chromosome haplogroup similarities [40]—our analyses of the LCT region and genome-wide data among southern Africans show that the pastoralist Khoe originate from a San group that adopted pastoralism, with introgression from an East African Afro-Asiatic group that migrated south prior to ∼1.3 thousand years ago.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214002097

And here's another one if you really want to get into it.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929714000676

 

[Grant]

http://whyfiles.org/122ancient_ag/2.html

"Bar-Yosef says that at a small Natufian community like Netiv Hagdud, wheat and rye were first domesticated about 11,500 years ago, during the Younger Dryas: "The beginning of cultivation emerged from an environment of stress that forced people to rely more heavily on cultivated species. The Natufians, seeing the depletion of natural fields, came to the conclusion that they should start planting them instead of harvesting in the wild."

Agriculture began in the Levant 1500 years earlier than anywhere else. The wheat later planted in Egypt came from there. The sheep and goats later brought to Africa by returnees came either from or through there and still later reached South Africa with the Khoe.