Genetic History of the Middle East! ❌

Studies and data on Arabs, Levantines, Anatolians, and Western Asians

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Coon's thoughts, I remember you telling me different Natufian skulls had different dominant traits by archeoligical site: "Morphologically, this skull is perfectly European and belongs Without question to the general Upper Palaeolithic type. It would also fit metri.. cally into the female range for this group. It would, however, fit equally well into the North African series of Afalou bou Rummel, except that it is somewhat narrower nosed than the females of that group as known at present. 11 In the absence of data on Palestinian Aurignacian crania, one may suppose that the Aurignacian Upper Palaeolithic Neanderthal-sapiens hybrid developed in this neighborhood from Skhul-like beginnings, and that this Erg el Ahmar female is a survival of it. The skulls from the later Natufian period, while exceedingly numerous, remain dubiously classified because of several conflicting ideas about them which have been published. Sir Arthur Keith12 in a preliminary report on the remains from Shuqbah and Kebara, states that the later Natuflans were short people, the males having a mean stature of 160 cm. and the females of 152 cm. The tallest male in the group was only 165 cm. in height. The hands and feet of these later Natufians were remarkably small, and their long bones were in no sense massive. The skulls which Keith describes are of a peculiarly Mediterranean type, with a cephalic index ranging from 72 to 78, thus rivalling the subdolichocephalic head form of short statured Mediterraneans living today. The brain cases are of medium size, and the faces absolutely small. The lower jaws are also small and weakly developed, with little chin prominence and a prevalence of alveolar prognathism. The wide, low-vaulted nose, in combination with prognathism, gives a somewhat negroid cast to the face. The browridges are smooth, and the whole system of muscularity in the male but slightly developed. These late Natufians represent a basically Mediterranean type with minor negroid affinities. 13 There was, apparently, a change of race during the Natufian. These small Mediterraneans must have brought their microliths from some point farther south or east, impelled by changes of climate.”
Natufians lack dna from Afria

Natufians have also been described by anthropologists as a Proto-Mediterranean population.
https://books.google.co.tz/books?id=BLZbLtmEJ68C
https://books.google.co.tz/books?id=AqsqBgAAQBAJ

“[The caves of Erq-el-Ahmar]…produced 132 individuals for Miss Garrod. All these Natufians share the same physical type, completely different from that of earlier Palestinians [i.e., Kebarans]. They are short, about 160 cm.* and dolichocephalic. They were probably Cro-Magnoid Mediterranean’s, presenting certain Negroid characteristics attributable to crossbreeding…” (Diop, 1974, p. 265).
https://www.scirp.org/pdf/ad_2022101013553029.pdf
Ancient DNA
Natufians 6.4% African

According to Lazardis et al. (2022), the Natufians had a total of 9.1% non-West Eurasian ancestry, the explanation by the geneticist was because of their partial descent from the Paleolithic Iberomaurusians, who's contributions were estimated at 22% in Natufians (27% is inferred when using an admixture graph framework).
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq0755

Other upcoming include: 'Ancient Soqotri genomes over 1,000 years document a small, consanguineous, and genetically homogenous population with deep connections to the Arabian Peninsula' which sequenced ancient DNA data from 39 individuals who lived between ~650-1750 CE at six locations across the island. Genomic data attest to strong connections between Soqotra and the Arabian Peninsula, especially to the Hadramawt region of coastal South Arabia. Modeling the Soqotri gene pool requires a ~55% contribution from a Natufian-like source, while models with a Neolithic Levantine-related source do not fit. This Natufian-related source is also required to model the ancestry of present-day people from the Hadramawt, while other groups living in Arabia and the Levant often are mostly better modeled with a Neolithic Levantine-related proxy. These data suggest that Natufian-like ancestry was also present in the Arabian Peninsula and that later Levantine-related ancestry may not have permeated throughout the entirety of this region.
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In a 2024 paper, the Mahara are 71% Natufian


mtDNA


Y-DNA
https://www.nature.com/articles/5201934

Autosomal DNA
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728368/


Mahra are having 85.9% indigenous Arabian ancestry proportions. The African admixture is not only from Ethiopians, but also the slave trade ports and Swahili settlers.
‘The 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists: Neanderthal ancestry in Yemeni populations’ - 2016
‘Testing support for the northern and southern dispersal routes out of Africa: an analysis of Levantine and southern Arabian populations - 2017

In 2022, "The Rashaayda Arab population from Sudan has the highest values for Middle Eastern-related ancestry (95.1% ± 4.0 SD), which is even higher than in the studied populations from Yemen or Lebanon (ranging from 57.3% ± 1.4 SD to 75.8% ± 4.5 SD)."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-60161-z

Soqotri are 70% Natufian, and 30% Iranian Neolithic

Anatolia
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.23.599747v1

Iran:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep31326

2019

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