Abstract

Background

Little is known about the peopling of the Sahara during the Holocene climatic optimum, when the desert was replaced by a fertile environment.

Results

In order to investigate the role of the last Green Sahara in the peopling of Africa, we deep-sequence the whole non-repetitive portion of the Y chromosome in 104 males selected as representative of haplogroups which are currently found to the north and to the south of the Sahara. We identify 5,966 mutations, from which we extract 142 informative markers then genotyped in about 8,000 subjects from 145 African, Eurasian and African American populations. We find that the coalescence age of the trans-Saharan haplogroups dates back to the last Green Sahara, while most northern African or sub-Saharan clades expanded locally in the subsequent arid phase.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that the Green Sahara promoted human movements and demographic expansions, possibly linked to the adoption of pastoralism. Comparing our results with previously reported genome-wide data, we also find evidence for a sex-biased sub-Saharan contribution to northern Africans, suggesting that historical events such as the trans-Saharan slave trade mainly contributed to the mtDNA and autosomal gene pool, whereas the northern African paternal gene pool was mainly shaped by more ancient events.

Details

Title
The peopling of the last Green Sahara revealed by high-coverage resequencing of trans-Saharan patrilineages
Author
Eugenia D’Atanasio; Trombetta, Beniamino; Bonito, Maria; Finocchio, Andrea; Genny Di Vito; Seghizzi, Mara; Romano, Rita; Russo, Gianluca; Paganotti, Giacomo Maria; Watson, Elizabeth; Coppa, Alfredo; Anagnostou, Paolo; Jean-Michel Dugoujon; Moral, Pedro; Sellitto, Daniele; Novelletto, Andrea
Publication year
2018
Publication date
2018
Publisher
BioMed Central
ISSN
14747596
e-ISSN
1474760X
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2207212358
Copyright
© 2018. This work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.