Decoding Africa’s Enigmatic Genetic Heritage: Investigating Lost Ethnic Groups in Angola’s Namib Desert

Decoding Africa’s Enigmatic Genetic Heritage: Investigating Lost Ethnic Groups in Angola’s Namib Desert

Scientists have discovered communities in Angola’s Namib Desert that were assumed to have disappeared half a century ago, such as the Kwepe community and the remaining speakers of the click-language Kwadi. Advanced DNA analysis on these groups has exposed a unique pre-Bantu lineage exclusive to the Namib Desert, enhancing our knowledge of the complex migration patterns and cultural exchanges in southern Africa.

The examination of DNA from populations once considered unreachable or extinct provides invaluable insights into Africa’s intricate genetic landscape.

As the cradle of humanity and the region with unparalleled genetic diversity, Africa remains a focus of intense study. While research into ancient DNA has started to elucidate some aspects of Africa’s genetic background before the spread of agriculture, challenges related to DNA preservation continue to impede a comprehensive understanding. A Portuguese-Angolan TwinLab team sought answers by exploring the multi-ethnic, remote regions of Angola’s Namib Desert where various cultural practices have intersected.

Jorge Rocha, a population geneticist at the Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO, University of Porto), led the field investigation alongside Angolan anthropologists Samuel and Teresa Aço from the Centro de Estudos do Deserto (CEDO). “We successfully identified communities thought to have been extinct for over five decades,” Rocha stated.

The researchers encountered several communities, including the Kwepe, traditionally a pastoral society that spoke Kwadi. Linguist Anne-Maria Fehn from CIBIO elucidated, “Kwadi, a click-language, shares a linguistic ancestor with the Khoe languages, spoken by various southern African forager and herder groups.” Rocha further added that Khoe-Kwadi languages are historically connected to migrations from eastern Africa.

The team also interacted with Bantu-speaking groups, who form part of the prevailing pastoral culture in southwest Africa, as well as marginalized groups with a distinctive foraging tradition that differentiates them from the neighboring Kalahari peoples. These marginalized communities have likely lost their original languages.

Modern and ancient DNA studies offer complementary perspectives

The research presents evidence that the Angolan Namib populations are not only genetically distinct from other contemporary groups but also exhibit considerable internal genetic structure. Sandra Oliveira, a researcher from the University of Bern in Switzerland, noted, “Much of the genome-wide diversity aligns with socio-economic factors. We devoted significant effort to determining how much of this local divergence and global uniqueness was due to genetic drift—a stochastic process affecting small populations—and by contributions from disappeared communities.”

In addition to the significant role of genetic drift, the team found that the descendants of Kwadi speakers and marginalized communities in the Namib Desert possess a unique pre-Bantu heritage found only in this region.

Mark Stoneking, a contributor to early genome-wide studies on southern African foragers, indicated, “Prior research suggested that foragers from the Kalahari descend from a foundational population that was the first to separate from all other existing human populations. Our findings align the newly discovered ancestry with this ancestral lineage but indicate that the Namib-related lineage diverged from all other southern African lineages, followed by a division between northern and southern Kalahari lineages.”

These new insights enable a more nuanced understanding of the historical interactions resulting from the migration of Khoe-Kwadi-speaking pastoralists and Bantu-speaking farmers into southern Africa. Furthermore, the research emphasizes that focusing modern DNA analysis on lesser-studied areas of high cultural and linguistic diversity can augment ancient DNA studies in unraveling Africa’s deep genetic history.

Reference: “Genome-wide variation in the Angolan Namib Desert reveals unique pre-Bantu ancestry” by Sandra Oliveira, Anne-Maria Fehn, Beatriz Amorim, Mark Stoneking, and Jorge Rocha, published on September 22, 2023, in Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh3822

The project received financial support from the Max Planck Society, the Foundation for Science and Technology, and FEDER funds.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Decoding Africa’s Genetic Heritage in Angola’s Namib Desert

More about Decoding Africa’s Genetic Heritage in Angola’s Namib Desert

• Science Advances Journal
• Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO)
• Max Planck Society
• Foundation for Science and Technology
• University of Porto
• University of Bern
• Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA)
• Centro de Estudos do Deserto (CEDO) (Note: Placeholder as the actual link was not provided)
• DOI for the Published Study