I think we will come to find that ANA isn’t one single component, the kind of ANA in Natufians will not be the same as the IBM ANA, that ANA is from Egypt/Sudan not Morocco and it has its own unique history.
I think ANA is basically a mix between something along the SSA-Basal Eurasian cline and local Aterian populations who I think would be SSA-like and have their own local adaptions within NW and NE Africa and would have been the major cause of this distinction between ANA in NW and NE Africa.
I do agree with you in that these samples probably have some recent Green Sahara SSA ancestry not found in Taforalt.
I've figured ANA is a stable signature composite of prehistoric mixture, but Takarkori is something different from ANA, which we dub whatever is in the African side of IBM. Here is my take on it from not too long ago:
If the Natufians were that much SSA admixed, doesn't that mean Arabians and other Natufian rich populations also have a good amount of SSA DNA?
www.somalispot.com
Takarkori is overwhelmingly like what is in Dinka and Yoruba. It has a high affinity with Saharan Nilo-Saharans for a good reason. Toubous are largely descended from such a Green Saharan mixture. On the paper, they claim that there was no continuity from a mixture of such enabling temperate geographic climatic oscillations when the Sahara desert is inhabited largely by Nilo-Saharan derived population clines with stable and gradient shifting frequency of Yoruba-like ancestry of east-west directionality with additional minor but statistically significant IBM/ANA genetics. To make the claim that the AHP was a period where people did not mix is an false claim, that not only seeks to distort the data right in front of them, but also hides the reality of the extant population outcomes. It's ridiculous. We have archaeology of Sudanic aquatic culture spreading, and Nile Valley pottery complex diffusion too.
"Stylistic resemblances between potsherds found in Saharan and Central Sudanese Nile sites (the so-called ‘dotted wavy line’ decoration, which is found from Mali to Sudan) testify to strong contacts and cultural exchanges within the region."
There were Sudanese scholars that went into the analysis of the pottery in northeast Africa. It is actually pristine, thorough work. An example of locals doing their history justice, which sets us an example of how it can be done with deliberation, effort and professionalism.
What is peculiar is, evidence pertaining to pottery horizons and spread, also strenghtens what I am talking about; interestingly, some of the earliest ceramic evidence were actually found in what we would imagine the pre/proto-Niger Congo speakers lived during late Paleolithic to early Neolithic-- the Ounjougou, in Mali -- previously a very tropical area during periods of higher humidity, inhabited by semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers. However, the Saharan hunter-gatherers found in Gobero, and the pastoralists in the middle Sahara (and their hunter-gatherer predecessors), owed their pottery use to the style that spread from the east, the Sudanic variation. So not only might there be a western origin in pottery, entailing large-scale movements of peoples across the Sahara from western Sahara to the east, but there was definitely a secondary or primary expansion from northeast Africa toward the west again. I have to mention there is some potential evidece to think that it popped up around the same time in northeast Africa. Either way, we're looking at complex movements during the African Human Period that was bi-directional.
You literally have Nilo-Saharan spread all the way to West Africa for that very reason and Kordofanian speakers, existing in the Nuba mountains in Sudanic lands. The Gobero IBM types in Niger had Sudanic type lower incisors removed.
"After an extended occupation hiatus the Sahara Desert was re-populated during the Early Holocene humid phase, a process that likely involved groups from multiple distinct source populations in northern Africa. Previous research has used material culture and craniometric analyses to infer population movements into and throughout the Sahara. Here, we present new data on Saharan population history using an independent data type: the presence and pattern of incisor avulsion, documented for the first time at sites in the southern Sahara Desert. At Gobero (Republic of Niger) both males and females were affected with no side or arcade preference. The frequency of affected individuals did not change through time; however the practice became exclusively male-focused and expanded to include the lateral incisors during the Middle Holocene. Comparison of the pattern and prevalence of avulsion at key Late Pleistocene sites from throughout northern Africa indicates the practice was restricted to the Maghreb. Our interpretation of these data suggests some Maghrebi migrants re-settled the southern Sahara, but over time, new groups entered the Sahara initiating a complex, multi-ethnic community dynamic in which some individuals enhanced the signal of social identity by extracting a greater number of teeth, thus producing a highly visibly modified countenance."
Is that also a coincidence? Is it a coincidence that their hunter-gatherer ancestors used Sudanic harpoons and pottery? Or did that arrive without contact? A lot of contact and anthropological impression without any mixture that shows in the genetics. What a conundrum.
The IBM ANA is much more drifted and is probably due to the Aterian mixture, indeed. But the genetics there is very differentiated too because of isolation, so no one would mistake ANA for Dinka. So far, that one is the true "ghost".
The ANA in Natufian is definitely like the one in IBM. The eastern version of that, which is also Afro-Asiatic, the same one the northeast Africans have. The Takarkori got some real ANA stuff, but it is proportional. Meaning it got a real ANA and Southwest Asian mixture. Do you think it is a coincidence that ANA-proper and Dzudzuana are equal? Clearly the Takarkori had an IBM-like gene flow with some minor real ANA or minor shared deeper ancestry. Still, the far majority of the ancestry that people have called "ghost" is really nested in the Northeast African genetics that characterizes the bulk of West and East Africans.
The final debunking of this is uniparental data, which shows migration of people across the Sahara during that very period. Cushites today carry Saharan-specific clades that spread into the Nile valley during the African Humid Period.
And when you see how, this notion of pastoralists being only culturally diffused, have y'all seen the spooky forms these distinct peoples make that are exactly like Cushitic bucanira forms?
These are Saharan pastoralists' burials:
Notice the burials in the center that are like the Cushitic pastoral cairn/mound burials that are of northeast Africa, but also take note of the crescent-like shape to the side of them:
Does it not look like the same things Kushites did, only with what they call bucrania? That is, middle Kermans did similar burials forming mounds in the center (something that originates much earlier among the first pastoralists in the southern Western desert (the origin place of Cushites), and instead of using stone to shape the half crescent, they used cattle bucrania:
The issue is that scholars that spend time working in the central and Maghreb exclusively have a tendency to divorce themselves from the work of the Nile Valley, and they often go out of their way to dismiss clear associations or unreasonably doubt on things which has made work more fragmented when it is the easiest associations you can have. For example, a study I came across on cairns in northwest Africa by Berbers never once mentioned any similarities with northeast Africa, not even a broad overview.
This makes these E Y-chromosomal DNAs that are non-E1b highly likely to be ANA (definitely Saharan) related, which only spread into the deep tropical Western Africa until ~7000, debunking this notion that is an endemic lineage that existed in the coastal West Africa for 10s of millennia. You see, so much interesting scholarship that transforms people's understanding of relatively recent deep human history can be explored and get proper funding if they set up correct propositions, but they constantly set up artificial dead ends because of constant unprofessionalism. The funny thing is, in about a decade, these guys will say, "As expected," and write down everything I said to a T, and pretend it was always obvious in hindsight. They are going to pretend they were with the program and yap about limitations, despite squandering the data available and never acknowledging their hand in doctoring false narratives. I have seen that narrative constantly. And then, when they somehow deliberately section one group to one side, and "SSA" to another, suddenly they are eager to write second-hand articles saying things like this:
"This shared Saharan human lineage took a different path from those in sub-Saharan Africa around the same time that modern humans first left the continent more than 50,000 years ago."
Wait. I thought Africans had the most diversity, and the paths were more complex?
Why did a team with no priors to African research or literature get the right to pick these available samples and then sabotage the narrow opportunities?
www.bbc.co.uk
