@Cognitive
It was a very surprising result.
The question is, where did pastoralism come from?
I propose a new hypothesis. I think that pastoralism could have come from the Western Desert, i.e., where Cushites sourced their ancestry. That doesn't mean they were Cushitic at all. This could have taken place before such ancestry mixed. However, it could have been in a differentiated form. So in the Western Desert of Egypt, pastoralism spread not only to the Nile Valley but also to the west.
This coincides with other types of movements, namely Chadic and even Berber expansion. Also, I think the L3f has something to do with this complex. The fact that Chadic loaned the word of sheep to people like Kanuri tells us that they were pastoralists.
The Egyptian Western Desert became dry, Afro-Asiatic groups like Cushites moved east toward the Nile, and proto-Chadic moved West toward Lake Chad but subsequently experienced a period of intense drying so they moved further south with the recessing lacustrine environment. There they encountered the West Africans who once expanded and farmed, and so they took up farming.
"At the Proto-Chadic period, on the order of about 7,000 years ago, a much vaster Lake Mega-Chad occupied the heart of the basin. e initial period of Chadic divergence into either three or four daughter societies would have spread Chadic communities all across the areas immediately west and south of that lake, from the plains north of the Jos Plateau on the west, to the Mandara Mountains in the middle, to as far east as the Guerra Mountains."
It seems to me that these Takarkori peoples were the early Afro-Asiatic speakers in that region and that Afro-Asiatics brought pastoralism. The Levantine phenomenon might have been a north expansion of Afro-Asiatic speakers to the Egyptian Delta, mixed with newly arrived Levantines, then a western expansion towards the Maghreb encountering the Takarkori, also initially starting in the Western Desert of Egypt. Those people could have been proto-Berbers.
It could have been that Chadics from the get-go were more AEA instead of resembling the heavy Eurasian Cushitic mixture. Western Egypt had some type of diversity. I believe this pastoral picture is complex. I have said before that Nilo-Saharan people from the Saharan region have a Cushitic AEA side to them and this is probably caused by the Chadic expansion.
All in all, Somalis are probably a genetic intermediate between heavy AEA proto-Chadian and what is maximized by pre-dynastic Egyptians, minus the later Levant influence that we see in the simulated Old Kingdom from Giza. That does not mean Cushitic is a mixture of both, but that this component existed heterogeneously in various spots in that western region while mixing with each other and forming a coherent pastoral culture before migrating due to the drying of oases.
There was also a group of Epipaleolithic peoples in Elkab that seem to have association with the early Western Desert pastoralists. Another hunter-fisher people were found in the Qarunian or as they call the Fayum B. The archeology fits with Elkab and similarly got connections with the early Pastoral traditions of the Western Desert, however, a fossil was revealed from that context, a 40-year-old woman in a flexed position that had phenotype similar to someone you'd imagine had a lot of Eurasian ancestry.
I believe if we ever get a transect of the Western Desert of Egypt, we will uncover much of the key genetic Afro-Asiatic history.
Their dental morphology always seemed complex between that of North Africans and AEA/SSA:
"In previous studies (Irish 1993; 1994; 1997; 1998a,b,c,d; Irish and Turner 1990), up to 36 noncorrelated (per Kendall's tau-b and Spearman's rho) ASU traits were recorded in 30 samples of Late Pleistocene through recent Sub-Saharan and North Africans. Of these 36 traits, it was determined (Irish 1993) that 23 differ significantly (p ~ 0.05 using Pearson's X2) between pooled samples! from the two geographic regions. Thus, it was decided to use as many of these diagnostic traits as possible to get a cursory indication of whether the E-97- 17, E-OO-1, and E-91-1 individuals are phenetic ally more akin to Sub-Saharan or North Africans. As Henneberg et al. (1980) note, there is uncertainty about the identity of Neolithic Nabta Playa inhabitants. Their provenience places them at a crossroads between the north and south, and their semi-nomadic way of life (Wendorf and Schild 1980; 1984; 1995-96; and elsewhere in this volume) may have brought them into contact with peoples from both regions."
The dentition of three individuals showed African characteristics with one possibly leaning more toward West Eurasians.
"Despite an ostensible resemblance to Sub-Saharan Africans in 26 out of 30 observations, the worn, largely incomplete dentitions are only from three individuals who mayor may not be representative of the general Nabta Playa population. A proper biological affinity estimate based on dental morphological data requires a larger sample, using more traits from both the mandible and maxilla (Turner 1985; Irish 1993; 1997, 1998a, b, c, d for examples). Furthermore, in the case of E-97-17, the small teeth with fine roots, interpreted here as female indicators, could be suggestive of a North African linkage; North Africans often exhibit reduced, morphologically simple teeth (Irish 1993; 1996; 1998a, b, c, d). Thus, these initial results should be viewed with caution."
Other studies have described the Gebel Ramalah peoples as more heterogenous, holding North African and "sub-Saharan African" characteristics, with most holding mosaic features between both.
Also for the people who doubt when I say that C-Group are the direct ancestors of Somalis:
"The MMD data (Tables 6.17, 6.19, 6.21, and 6.23) reveal that Lower Nubians share a closer affinity to sub-Saharan groups on average than do Upper Nubians. The earlier Lower Nubian samples, especially C-Group, are mainly responsible. These data reveal that both C-Group samples share close affinities to all sub-Saharan groups (i.e., Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Chad, and Kenya). Figures 6.8-6.13 reveal that the C-Group samples may have a stronger relationship with the samples from the east (Somali, Ethiopia, and sub-Saharan East), over other areas of the subcontinent. Gebel Ramlah shares some similarities with sub-Saharan African groups but is still significantly different from the C-Group. These affinities suggest that both cultures have something of a relationship with sub-Saharan Africans, though with potentially different origins."
I forgot about it, but I already have lightly mentioned some of these earlier points.
New Somali sample from NW Africa https://www.yfull.com/tree/E-PF2438/ No relatives for 9200 years Responding to this highly interesting post by @Reformed J, I will have to post what I think about it: That Somali could have a direct Chado-Berber node ancestry. My assumption is movement...
www.somalispot.com
Absolute garbage. It’s easily skewed by the exact reference populations used. Honestly, I trust PCA and ADMIXTURE more.
